


Reyne

by itsjustsilver



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Blood and Violence, Breeding, Collective Punishment, Come Inflation, Cruelty, Cynical Rey, Dark, Dominant Kylo Ren, Emperor Kylo Ren, F/M, Family Extermination, Fictional Religion & Theology, Forced Pregnancy, Harems, Knotting, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo and Rey deserve each other, Kylo kills not just the men but the women and the children too, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Loss of Virginity, Murder, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Omega Verse, Original Character(s), Palace Intrigue, Politics, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Kylo Ren, Power Dynamics, Pregnancy Kink, Public Claiming, Public Sex, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, executions, psychopath kylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23130349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsjustsilver/pseuds/itsjustsilver
Summary: The Princess Rey does not want to attract the Emperor’s interest.Alpha Kylo/Omega ReyVery AU. Very dark story.Contains non-con and violence.Please check tags, they do get updated.*** Do not plagiarise. ***
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 395
Kudos: 1110
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp





	1. Chapter 1

I was there when they took the Empress Arta away, and I was there when he killed her.

The day they took her away, I was in a grand hall, being examined along with 49 other young women my age. It had been such a perfectly ordinary day- ordinary at least for the Hopefuls who lived in the Emperor’s harem. That’s what they called us. The Hopefuls.

We were dancing to impress the eunuchs who were the ones to decide if we would ever get to impress the Emperor. Only, not all of us Hopefuls were very hopeful. I for one was trying very hard to get kicked out of the harem, and I’d been doing very well, I thought. I’d been dancing very poorly on purpose and was getting away with it. That’s not to say that I was dancing like an ape; they would have seen through that. I know because I tried before, when I was younger, and only got punished for it.

Like I said, not all of us Hopefuls actually wanted to be Concubine or Imperial Consort or even Empress. Some of us just wanted to go home.

So, there I was, dancing as lethargically as possible and feeling very pleased at having been the one to put the slight grimace on the Chief Eunuch Hux’s face as he swept by and observed me wilting like a false flower in my choice of deliberately garish gown, when the screaming began.

Oh, I’m telling the story in rather a jumbled way; let me backtrack a little:

Maybe fifteen minutes before the screaming, we had heard the sounds of heavy boots striding past our hall. That was weird in itself, because heavy boots meant men, and usually, the only men allowed in the harem were the Emperor himself and the guards that accompanied him. The eunuchs of course didn’t count.

But the Emperor never came except in the evenings, so why was he here now?

I could tell that the examiners were puzzled by this; they too were flummoxed by the sound of the heavy boots. But part of our training was never to let anything faze us, so us young women kept dancing. The perfect Concubine (or Imperial Consort, or Empress, whichever one aspired to be) was expected to be beautiful and graceful and noble and charming and intelligent and skilled and bright and judicious, and above all, to be completely unflappable.

After all, our Emperor was famous for his cruelty (he was rumoured to have killed his own parents), and his Empress should be someone who could dance for him without missing a step even as he disembowelled his enemies in front of her or whatever other barbaric thing the eunuchs envisioned he liked to do while he was being entertained when they came up with this ridiculous constellation of traits for us to emulate.

It was all ridiculous, and my family considered it a punishment and a disgrace to have their only daughter at Court. They thought I was going to be little more than a nobly-titled whore, and my father cried tears of anger the morning I was sent off.

All right, I’m exaggerating- I don’t know if he did that, because he was too angry to see me off, so I never got to see his face, but I like to imagine that he did. Anyway, my mother was there, and she was crying enough for the both of them, and my governesses too, and my playmates, and all my brothers, and maybe even half our holy city, and I promised them rather passionately and ambitiously that I would return home with my virtue intact. I also promised to write my family diligently, and they promised to visit every year. We’ll come back to that later.

The screams were a shock to everyone. Unless you were singing or storytelling, you never raised your voice in the harem (or anywhere, really), so we knew from the loud screaming that something really bad must have happened.

The examiners began muttering very anxiously, and two of them went to open the doors very wide to see what was going on, and it was just at the right moment that they did that because the guards were dragging the Empress Arta through the harem, and they were passing right then in front of our hall.

All the horrified young women stopped dancing to stare- that is, all except me.

The sight of the Empress being hauled away with such indignity- she herself embracing that frowned-upon state with her loud screaming and messy tearful face, was enough to shake all of our brains. The examiners forgot that they were examining and the examinees that they were being examined. I forgot that I was supposed to be bungling the dance, and instead of coming to a rubbernecking halt like the others, got carried away and began dancing as if I were alone, forgetting even the choreographed moves, which was easy to do as the musicians had also stopped playing.

You know how some people can sleep through anything? Well, I can dance through anything, and I can especially dance through highly charged events. If I let it, my body becomes an instrument for the charged energy that flows through a room. I can let it direct me, move me, play me… Sometimes, I even feel like I can direct _it_.

Don’t you dare laugh, I’m being perfectly serious.

When I was younger, funny things used to happen around me when I got very animated and overly emotional. Things would break or fly or fall off shelves. If outside, the wind might even pick up and become louder.

Once, I swear I made a table fly to one of my younger brothers. His name was Silver, and of my five brothers, he was closest to me in age and in looks, being my younger by a year, and having dark brown hair and eyes and golden skin like mine. The rest of our siblings were fairly light in colouring.

Speaking of colouring, all of my parents’ children had colours for names except me, and depending on my mood, that could either make me feel jealous or special.

I never got a good reason why I was Rey.

My nurse told me that my mother had meant to name me Grey but that the drugs had addled her, and my father, who never understood the obsession with colours anyway, had just gone along with it.

I asked my mother if that was true, but she laughed and denied it, and told me that what it meant was that I was her little ray of sunshine. I couldn’t spell, so I believed her, and by the time I was lettered enough to realise that it was a differently-spelled word altogether, I hadn’t cared to know anymore. Let her keep her secrets.

Silver. He was only a year younger than me, and he had terrible motor skills. He was constantly falling because he never looked where his feet were going; he was always looking somewhere off to the side or to the sky.

He fell down the stairs, with his governess just a few steps behind him. I wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs, but I was sitting in full view of it, and both the governess and I went for him. Only, I didn’t move with my feet. I reached my arm out as if I could prevent him from falling just by doing that, and the little round table next to me went flying, as if thrown by a great force.

Up the stairs, at breakneck speed, that table flew, and it stopped my brother’s fall; and a second after the loud thunk of impact as his palms landed flat on the flat of the table, the governess had him by the collar.

I stood up immediately, and the table, as though it had previously been moving on a string that was now abruptly and unceremoniously cut, went crashing down the stairs, and everyone who heard it came running.

My brother was screeching excitedly about the flying table, of course, but no one would believe him, especially since the governess refused to corroborate his story even though she couldn’t explain what the table was doing at the bottom of the stairs with one of its legs in splinters. No one had seen me reach my arm out, so my brother thought _he_ had made the table fly.

Maybe he did. Maybe we both did.

Now I think about it, I don’t know why none of us did the obvious thing which is to claim that the Gods had done it- had saved Silver by making the table catch his fall, something like that. It would have made for a compelling story, and everyone would have eaten it up. We were the ruling family of the Holy Lands of Jakku, which was the most religious and sacred kingdom in the whole Empire. The word ‘Holy’ even appears in our full titles, twice!

All right, I admit it: I’m lying. I know why no one credited it to the Gods. It’s because it never occurred to us to do so. We were possibly (and ironically) the most unreligious family in all of Jakku, maybe even in all of the Empire. I think it has to do with all those ceremonies and rituals we had to preside over. There’s only so much singing and incense-burning and meditative prayer one can take before either religious mania or cynicism sets in.

Historically, about half our family are religious maniacs, and half are cynics, but because the religious maniacs always gave up throne and title for the temples, it was left to the cynics to rule. The last person to give up his sweet royal life was my uncle, who’s still presumably praying in a temple or monastery somewhere in the desert. The rest of us are all devoted cynics, although I have my suspicions about my brother, Blue.

That night, my father summoned Silver and me to him and said very cynically, “Tables don’t fly. You two dragged it up the stairs and pushed it, didn’t you?”

It was phrased like a question, but we knew he wasn’t asking us. He was telling us.

Still, like a complete moron, my brother went around for a few days boasting that he had special powers until my father made him shut up. Again, I don’t know why he didn’t just claim that some God or other had saved him. I think it proves that he might be the most die-hard cynic of us all. Or, that he was just a five-year-old moron.

My father said that under Heaven, only the Emperor possessed special powers and that anyone who claimed to possess like powers would attract the bloody-minded interest of the Emperor, and is that what my brother desired?

My brother Blue asked, “If the Emperor possesses the powers of a God, then is the Emperor not also a God?” and my father shuddered and rejoined, “Let us hope the possibility of his Godhood never enters into his mind. We already have 365 Gods to honour, which is one God a day, and if we have to invent a new God, then let him first invent a new day.”

My brother Red who was the eldest pointed out that the Emperor had already erected thousands of statues of himself, and why, people were already worshipping at them, including the one here, which was one of the biggest statues in a city of statues, and it was only a matter of time before the Emperor declared himself to be a God.

The Emperor thankfully never discovered his Godhood, and my brother ceased his imprudent boasting, and in the meantime, strange occurrences that people always found reasonable explanations for continued to take place around me.

Silver came to my bedchamber the morning of my departure, when the sun was clothed in lilac and lavender and creeping over the rooftops of our holy city. He was fully dressed to see me off, in silvery velvet and embroidered silks and silk stockings, and he was wearing his short sword with a jewelled silver scabbard that I had gifted him the year before, on his 11th birthday.

I dismissed my girl-servants, and after they had gone in the other room, he came and sat on my bed. His face was solemn, and his eyes were wide, when he said very quietly without preamble, “Reyrey… You won’t forget what father told us, will you? Tables don’t fly. Not here, and not in the Capitol.”

It had been six years since that incident, and we had not talked about it since. I, of course, had never forgotten it, but I’d thought that maybe he had.

“How do you know it was me?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.

“I’m not stupid,” he said, trying to sound snappish. His eyes were beginning to shine wetly. Maybe he had hoped I would deny it.

I took his hand. “No, I don’t suppose you are.”

“You’re the stupid one,” he declared. He angrily dashed tears from his face. But they weren’t angry tears; I felt it- I felt the force of his true emotions.

“Maybe I am,” I said. I was beginning to cry too, and I wanted to bend and contort my body and let the river of love and sadness catch me and flow through me.

But I didn’t. I resisted it and looked out the window, and he did the same.

“Well, don’t be stupid in the Capitol,” he said finally. “Don’t attract his interest.”

Little boy wisdom. We were only children, but it felt at the time like we were two grown people arriving at the entrance of a dark forest where we knew we must separate. Me into its known dangers, and him back to the safety of home.

Oh, Silver. I miss him the most.

I recall that morning every time I think about him, and when I picture his face in my head, it’s always that same vulnerable face still full of baby fat, with the stiff upper lip under a pair of dark eyes covered in a film of standing tears, and the rising sun glowing pinkly on his golden skin. A little boy trying to be brave for his sister whom he was afraid for.

My apologies; I’m babbling. I can get too sentimental sometimes. Let me get back on topic: The arrest of the Empress and my dancing as she went.

So, just like that emotional morning almost five years ago, the forcible removal of the Empress Arta created a violent force of emotions, only this time, it wasn’t in me, and I didn’t resist its influence. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe it was because I was distracted and already in motion- already dancing, so it was easy to just keep dancing. Maybe it was because it was the first time in a long time that I’d felt its irresistible pull, and I selfishly wanted to key into it. Whatever it was, I allowed myself to let it take me over. I let it move me like a puppet.

I think it was only for a few moments that I danced alone like that, tapping as I danced into the frightening, raging forces that twisted and turned and stretched my body. It seemed like the easiest thing, the most natural thing, what I was doing. Despite the encroaching, smothering darkness of these energies that came out of the terrified Empress and her unyielding captors and took hold of me, it felt freeing to give in to it; it felt right.

It did cross my mind that if any of the eunuchs were looking, I might be distinguished for having displayed unflappability or whatever, but at the same time, I had clearly deviated from the routine, and I was sure I was dancing with inappropriate vigour. And that’s not to mention that we already sort of knew who was going to stay on.

First of all, the eunuchs (who liked to gossip) had their favourites, and of course there were practical considerations, and political considerations, and last but not most trifling, because we were all nobles, the eunuchs, despite having authority over us while we were mere Hopefuls, were afraid to offend. Thus, nobody who they knew truly wanted to leave had ever been forced to stay past the mandatory first five years.

But of course, as I said, there were political considerations which could discombobulate: Some of the children of difficult rulers were captives in all but name, and some of us nobly-born Omegas had families that wanted things we did not. And as for the Emperor, nobody but himself knew what he wanted.

Thankfully, I wasn’t important enough to be held captive, and my family wanted for me to come home. I was confident that I would soon be writing to them to request that they make the necessary arrangements for my return journey.

But it was not to be.

The next month, I became one of 12 in my cohort to be elevated to the rank of Concubine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. New chapter for you.

That day, they gathered the 50 Hopefuls in a grand hall for the ceremony. The Chief Eunuchs of the Imperial Household were present, as were the 27 remaining Concubines and the Imperial Consort Jiya.

Normally, ten Hopefuls would be elevated each year to take the place of the ten Concubines that had attained the age of 23 and been sent home, but this year there were an additional two places that needed filling: those of the deceased Imperial Consort Melanthe and the doomed Empress Arta.

I was completely unprepared to hear my name called out, so cocksure was I that I would be going home. I’d spent the last few years being perfectly mediocre at all the arts and made a bit of a name for myself for being more refractory and unconventional than was seen as desirable, and anyway, I had been made to believe that the eunuchs didn’t intend to keep me.

They’d had to say my name twice.

That day was also the same one the execution of the Empress had been scheduled for, and not to be crude, but I felt like I was walking to my own execution as I walked out in front of my peers to receive the red fringed shawl and red silk fan from the Imperial Consort Jiya, who had become by elimination of her peer and superior, the highest ranking there.

Jiya, whom I liked very much, looked as mystified as I felt, but all the same, she congratulated me like she had the others, and told me that I had been honoured and specially selected by the Emperor to join the ranks of her Sisters etcetera, etcetera, which would have made me laugh, had I not been so dismayed.

The Emperor, honour me? Specially selected me?

Either I did laugh, or it was just really funny how confounded I looked, because Jiya suddenly looked like she was about to burst out laughing.

Allow me to explain why I found the whole thing laughable, and you will soon understand.

Up till that point, I had only ever spoken to the Emperor once.

He was giving audience in the throne room, and both the Empress, and his mother who was still alive at the time, were with him.

I was the only nobly-born girl to be present at Court without a male family member, which was extra bold and scandalous given that I was also an Omega. By it, my family meant to convey their displeasure with the summons, but also to show off my (and therefore their) sacrosanctity and the peoples’ respect for my person.

‘Nobody would dare dishonour a Princess of Jakku,’ was the obvious message, with the not so obvious one being: ‘So don’t you dare.’

I was presented to the Emperor and Empress as Her Holy Highness, the Princess Rey of the Holy Lands of Jakku. I was and still am also technically High Priestess and Temple President and Prioress and Prophetess of a number of cults and religions by virtue of inheritance or lifetime appointment, and that made my full title much, much longer, but the decision was made for me to lay aside the mantle of my religious responsibility so that I could go to Court without it ‘causing offense’ to a number of deities, and so these were all dropped from official use.

I remember that day very well, because my impression of each member of the Imperial family was sealed from that one short audience, and because I was able to accurately divine their immediate personal desires, which you must admit is an impressive thing to do within the ten minutes or so that I was granted. At the same time, it was not terribly difficult, since they were practically revealing themselves, and in a way that I almost felt was designed to make me feel as uncomfortable as possible.

At the time, the Emperor was in his 26th year of life, which was double of mine, and he had already been ruling for seven years. He was tall and lean and very handsome, but he had a bored and brooding expression, hands which were slightly scraped up like he’d just been in a fight, and he almost looked too long for his throne.

Standing at his left, his wife, the Empress Arta, who was also his first-cousin on his mother’s side, had big round eyes and blonde hair. She was plump and shapely and considerably shorter than him. She had already given him a daughter.

On his other side, the Empress Dowager, also blonde of hair, short, and plump, looked closer in relation to her niece and daughter-by-law than to her own son. She wore her hair up in twisted braids and was the only one of the three to actually sport a crown.

The Emperor beckoned me forward and I approached his throne.

“So,” he drawled, in such tones of high cynicism and mockery it would have put him right at home with my own family, “you’re the priestess.”

I always look back at interactions like this one and imagine myself astounding and silencing everyone with my perfectly witty responses, but I hadn’t expected him to speak to me so rudely, that I was the one astounded and silenced.

I think I eventually said, “Yes, Sire.”

The Empress laughed a simpering laugh. “How blessed we are to have you here,” she exclaimed happily. Her voice was deeper than I expected and jarred with her looks. “Pray to the Good Goddess to favour us with a son this time, if it please Your Holiness,” she entreated slyly. She touched her stomach and gave it a tender look, and then her eyes shot up to her husband to check if he was looking.

He was not.

“Nothing would please me more than to intercede with the Goddess on behalf of Their Imperial Majesties,” I said quietly, which is one of my standard responses to requests like that. I didn’t even know which Goddess she meant for me to pray to. Not that it mattered; I didn’t intend to do any praying.

The Emperor curled his lip, and I thought for a second that he could hear my insincerity and was responding to it, but he raised his hand to his wife, and without looking at her said, “Guard your tongue, Madam. I have not called on you to speak.”

Then, regarding me, he said, “Why have your brothers not come?”

I repeated the words that I had been coached to say: “My noble brothers’ first duty is to the Gods who reign in Heaven and involve themselves not in the empires of men, which rise and fall as their will dictates,” I said with reproachful solemnity. “It already makes unhappy the Gods that I must abandon my anointed duty for five years at His Imperial Majesty’s pleasure. Portents of their divine discontent have been occurring throughout our realm.”

I think I did a rather good job of it (as I should have; I’d practiced saying it a thousand times), because his mother made a sound like a strangled gasp and turned to him.

“Kylo, dearest, it won’t do to anger the Gods, not before your expedition to the North,” she said with breathless alarum. “Perhaps it’s better that the holy Princess return to the Land of the Gods, or perhaps we can arrange for a way that her duties to them might be fulfilled while she is at Court…”

The Emperor cut her off with a sharp “No,” and his mother swallowed the rest of her words and hurriedly nodded, saying, “Yes, I see. There may be no need to go through all that trouble. After all, you may even send home all these noble ladies before your departure. Yes, I expect Her Holy Highness’s stay at Court will be a short one. As short as two weeks, if I may dare express my hopes that the _important rite_ happens soon.” She looked towards the Empress and they exchanged hopeful smiles.

I was positive that by important rite, she was talking about the mating between the Emperor and Empress that had yet to take place, and I thought then that that was an event I would gladly pray to the Gods to accelerate.

If he took her as his One True Mate, they would become as one person, and the concubinage system would be dissolved, and then I would be free to go home.

“Your hopes are yours to express, Mother,” said the Emperor with a sigh. He shifted in his cramped throne. I watched his long legs rearrange themselves.

He was watching me lazily, with that very bored expression. At least it appeared that way on the surface- but I don’t think he took his eyes off me the whole time, and it gave me an uneasy feeling like I was being watched by a predator who already knew they had their prey cornered but was not yet in the mood to eat it.

“And how goes it with the Gods in the holy city of Niima, priestess?” he inquired of me. His words were laced with scorn; he was mocking me openly. “Does my statue still stand?” he asked, as if he didn’t very well know from his spies that it was not only standing, but also being unofficially worshipped at this very moment.

“The Gods suffer your statue. It still stands,” I said. I was very used to speaking for the Gods. I’d been speaking for them since I turned three and was old enough to start attending ceremonies. “However,” I added, “they remind His Imperial Majesty that what man builds, if he builds it without their blessing, the Gods tear down without compunction.”

The Empresses moaned as though they could see the Gods coming to tear everything down, and they both looked heavenward and made fretful signs.

The Emperor quirked his mouth. I think the audacious, easy way in which I made my own veiled opinions sound like the collective opinions of hundreds of celestial beings amused him.

“And yet, as you say, my statue still stands,” he observed.

“It pleases the Gods to watch and see,” I returned boldly and serenely. “Oftentimes whatever man makes with his hands, also he undoes with his own hands.”

This last part I was not coached to say; I was led by my natural disinhibition. But the reason I was able to say it and get away with saying it was because Jakku held a very unique place within the Empire; in fact, it wasn’t entirely clear whether or not we were an official part of it!

He laughed suddenly; derisively. “We are pleased to see you at Court, Princess. I go to Ilum in a month, and I would say that if you must pray, pray that my northern campaigns be successful, but I wouldn’t waste a single breath on prayers. I’ve always done as I wanted, with or without the Gods’ blessing, and whoever tears down what I build, I will destroy, whether they be man or God.”

So, they had each, in their own manner, made known their desires. But, only one would have them.

The Empress Arta miscarried a girl only a week later, and it was the Empress Dowager’s stay at Court that would last less than a month from that audience for she died three days before the Emperor’s departure in mysterious circumstances. As for the Emperor Kylo, the only one of them to get his wish, his campaign, which was the longest of his career, spanned almost three years.

When he returned, he had expanded his empire by more than half, having gone even further than Ilum and penetrated that region called the Unknown Regions, and he bore a souvenir of his triumph: He had a scar crossing one side of his face, which, together with his generous mouth and brooding expression, only made him even more desirable to the women, or so I was told.

I had no opinion on that point for a long time.

As for the _important rite_ , you know of course that it didn’t take place, and our Emperor remained, to everyone’s puzzlement and my vexation, unmated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think of our Kylo and our Rey?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who expressed interest in this story, new chapter for you.  
> x

I think you understand now why I laughed in my heart when I was told that I had been personally honoured and selected by him.

The moment the ceremony was over, I went to Hux who was the Chief Eunuch of the Hopefuls and asked if I could not give up my place?

“There’s obviously been a mistake,” I complained, which was the wrong thing to say and in the wrong tone, but I was very distraught and was not thinking properly.

Hux narrowed his eyes at me. Hux was the only eunuch I knew that didn’t look like a eunuch at all. His skin was firm, and he was quite lean with a face made primarily of jutting cheekbones and thick lips, and he could look sullen very easily. He turned that sullen look onto me. “Does Her Highness, the Princess-Concubine Rey think the Emperor made a mistake?” he asked me.

I tried not to grind my teeth at the insulting change to my title. Its use was deliberate; he’d never addressed me as anything but Rey in almost five years now.

This is how it came about:

In the beginning, I was addressed properly by all the eunuchs, of course, but I could tell that they were very uncomfortable. I later pieced it together that despite their loyalty to the Emperor they genuinely thought it was sacrilege for a Princess of the Holy Lands of Jakku to be in his keeping as one of his potential bedmates, especially since, as I said, whether we were even an official part of the Empire at all was up for debate.

It would have been very clear cut if the Emperor had by right of conquest installed himself the sovereign ruler of Jakku and every holy grain of sand in it, but presumably because every single man in his army belonged to one religion or another (and all religions held Jakku as their sacred city, thanks to the ingenious machinations of one of my long-dead ancestors- may he rest in serenity), we were spared from war, and His Imperial Majesty’s only act of aggression against us was the summons for me to move to Court.

Oh, I’m forgetting that statue of himself. That statue was his true first act of imperialist aggression. He sent in a platoon of unarmed soldiers to do the building, which was his right, although they knocked over a few other unrecognisable statues to do so, which was not right, but we didn’t stop them.

We never stop anyone with clout from entering into and erecting in Jakku whatever religious shrine or site or monument they felt like erecting and, hopefully in the process, also adopting our beloved home as their own beloved and sacred lands. It’s how we make friends and money.

So, after about the 500th awkwardly uttered “Your Holy Highness” by the eunuchs, I’d insisted that the ‘Holy’ be dropped from my title by reason of my not being at Court in any religious capacity.

They were so relieved that they barely put up resistance, and honestly, being young and playful and carefree, I was also relieved that they didn’t expect me to continue to make appearances, or worse, carry out ceremonial duties in the temples of the Capitol.

That was a slippery slope of informality, but it seemed like a great trade-off at the time.

I fiercely regret my then-immaturity and lack of foresight. Maybe if I’d made sure they continued to view me as a holy and sacred Princess, they would have in turn made sure I was sent home after my five years of mandated Courtly education.

Alas, I can blame no one but myself for the position I am in now.

Hux was scowling at me in a way I was sure he never would have five years ago. “Should I send a report to the Emperor informing him that the Princess-Concubine Rey is of the opinion that he has made a mistake?” he asked.

“No, no,” I said, “Everyone knows that the Emperor never makes mistakes. Whatever he does, he always means exactly to do.”

Five years of training to be the perfect pleasing Omega had only succeeded in honing my ability to spout flowery nonsense and had done nothing at all to erase my inbuilt cynicism, which some people (the Chief Eunuch Hux being one of them) could somehow pick up on.

Hux harrumphed and made to move off, but I blocked him.

“However,” I continued gravely, “many of my peers are very upset to not have been picked. Look at them crying.”

He pursed his thick lips and gave me a more baleful type of sullen look, although it was mixed with another expression, one that I can’t describe and so won’t even try, but was an expression which meant, “I knew it wasn’t over. It’s never over with you.”

“Look at Cirr cry,” I insisted. I waited for him to do as I said, and then continued sadly, “Look. It breaks my heart to see her so upset, and she deserves this, truly deserves this. She worked so hard. I would give up my place in an instant, if it would make her happy…”

“Her Highness, the Princess Cirr will return to Bespin, and Her Highness, the Princess-Concubine Rey will move to her new quarters…” Hux interrupted, before I interrupted him also:

With my most glacial tone, I said, “I believe you are addressing me incorrectly. I am Her Holy Highness, the Princess Rey of the Holy Lands of Jakku.”

Hux stared at me for a moment and then bowing deeply, he said in starkly polite tones, “My deepest apologies, Your Holy Highness. Allow your servant to begin anew.” He cleared his throat, and said, “By His Imperial Majesty’s orders, Her Highness, the Princess Cirr will return to Bespin, and Her Holy Highness, the Princess-Concubine Rey will move to her new quarters in the harem of her illustrious Emperor whom she is honoured to serve.”

He raised a brow and returning to his normal voice- albeit raising it a little because I was already stalking off in high dudgeon, he added, “Today is not the day to be anything but dutiful, I need hardly remind you, Rey.”

He was referring to the impending execution, which was scheduled for that afternoon.

Long before it was made public, it had already come to us through the grapevine that the Empress Arta had been arrested and charged with High Treason. She was accused and then shortly convicted of planning and ordering the assassinations of the Imperial Consort Melanthe and her infant son the Imperial Prince Kylo. She was also accused of adultery.

The ordering of the assassination was something everyone at Court already suspected, although the actual _planning_ of it would be giving her too much credit, I think. The charge of adultery, we all knew had been only tacked on for the purpose of sealing her doom.

“She made a bet, and she lost,” was the phrase that was being repeated not just in the palace, but throughout the entire empire.

Everyone knew she had hoped the Emperor would save her by mating with her thus making her his One True Mate and exempt from any law that would cause harm to befall _him_. After all, the lives and fates of One True Mates were tied, and no one who wasn’t also suicidal would have their One True Mate put to death.

Logically, one could follow the threads of her thoughts and come to see how she might have thought she could get away with the assassinations. Relative by blood, mother to his eldest child, and newly pregnant again, if some of the gossip was to be believed.

I remember Xian asking me if I thought there was any chance the Empress could still be pardoned.

I get along very well with Xian. She was an Aeosian Princess, and Aeos Prime – which I thought was a very weird name for a kingdom – had been ushered into the Empire after a humiliatingly short and brutal battle in which her only full-brother made a fool of himself by surrendering on the battlefield before it was evident that they were losing, and then getting his head cut off anyway.

So, Xian didn’t exactly harbour tender feelings towards our illustrious Emperor, even if her half-brother the new King of Aeos Prime wanted for her to do well at Court, and I knew that in asking the question she was expressing hope that our Empress would be pardoned, mate with our Emperor, and dismiss the rest of us.

Xian said, “If only she hadn’t signed off on the murder of the Imperial Prince. But she’s pregnant again, her ladies say, and maybe he’ll wait to see if she bears him an heir this time? I think he’s only waiting for that, and then he’ll mate with her.”

I thought about that awkward meeting in the throne room five years back. I remembered the way the Empress had gazed at her husband as she touched her stomach. I tried to remember if he’d looked at her once. I don’t think he did.

Ah, I forgot to tell you what my first and lasting impressions of each member of the ruling family were from that event.

The Emperor, as you know, disquieted me with his frank cynicism, which is a quality encouraged only within my own family, and only within our own home.

I relayed our short conversation in its entirety to my family without expressing my true feelings, taking care to emphasise that bit he’d said about destroying anyone, man or God, and I received a letter that, without expressing their true feelings, made clear my family’s corresponding disquietude, as it confirmed to them certain reports on the Emperor.

It wasn’t good to have an Emperor that didn’t at least pretend respect for the Gods, seeing as that was our only export.

The Dowager Empress I thought was a silly power-hungry woman, but as she’s left the picture, we won’t talk more ill of her. The other Empress, the one about to leave the picture, was a miserably insecure woman who fell into a strange mood when the Emperor left for his campaigns and left her behind unmated.

She used to visit me with all sorts of gifts and requests to bring to the Gods until, sick of her tears and whining, I’d foolishly and short-sightedly (these unfortunate qualities of mine will be a theme, brace yourselves) told her that the Gods, angered by my being at Court, turned their ears away from me while I remained here, and so there was no point in asking me to help her.

I wish I could say that I had hoped my words would prompt her to work towards causing me to be sent home, but I really was truly only that foolish and that contemptuous of her.

After I became useless to her, she became coldly dismissive of me, and she spent the rest of the years pretending I didn’t exist, although she did send her ladies to hint to me that I should return the gifts. So, I also found out that she was very petty.

It was good for me that she ignored me, because she bullied almost everyone else. I also heard that she was shockingly cruel to anyone that fell pregnant, and I can’t imagine how intolerable she must have been to Jiya and Melanthe after they had successfully given birth and been made Imperial Consorts.

One day, in my second year at Court, I came into my room and saw Jiya there with her baby. She’d been hiding from the eunuchs and the Empress’s servants, and she thought they wouldn’t look for her in the Hopefuls’ quarters.

The Empress had pinched the poor child, she told me, and had not stopped even when the baby cried- in fact, pinching her harder the more she cried. A bruise had formed on the baby’s arm. The reason for this animosity? She was angry that Jiya had taken the name Kyla for her daughter when the Empress’s own daughter was already named Kyla.

“But it was the Emperor who named her,” cried Jiya. It was true, too. The Emperor, who was then still in the Unknown Regions waging his military campaign and had hence missed the birth of his second child, had sent back a missive in which he’d decreed that she be given the name Kyla. That only enraged the Empress further.

Did I mention that I thought the Emperor was full of himself? Well, I thought he was. The names of his three children were Kyla, Kyla, and Kylo.

“She’s an idiot,” I sighed. “If he was going to mate with her, he would have done it long ago.”

Xian shrugged. “Oh, well. She made a bet and lost.”

We were walking to the courtyard where the execution was to be held, two abreast. In spite of the general dislike for the Empress, I don’t think any one of us wanted to watch it happen, but we had been commanded to attend for obvious reasons.

As we neared the courtyard, I begun feeling the same sort of energy that made itself manifest during the arrest of the Empress, but now it was multiplied; more. More, and more intense.

I was being slowly possessed by the equally intense impulse to just… dance.

I say _dance_ , because that is what I am used to, but I think if I had been brought up by the sword, I could just as easily enter into a trance of sensational swordplay, so this should be more accurately described as an impulse to _move_.

Frustratingly, we were forced to a sudden halt. We were passing under the covered passage that opened out directly onto the courtyard, and the girls in front of us stopped very abruptly, and a pandemonium of distressed voices bounced loudly and chaotically off the damp walls.

Reportedly, the women that were first to enter, in seeing what was in the courtyard, stopped and tried to go back, and a few also fainted. We didn’t know at the time, because we were almost in the very back of the procession, being new to the ‘sisterhood’ of Concubines.

But their distress was palpable in the swelling current of energy, which was like a great and living force pressing on me, trying to manipulate my limbs.

I was very disturbed by this, and although it was difficult, I somehow managed to ignore it.

I sighed and said, “What now?” but we had begun moving again, and very soon we were able to see for ourselves exactly what had so upset the others.

The main of the courtyard where the execution was to be held was crowded. I don’t know why I imagined it to be empty, but I guess I’d either forgotten or not realised that some of the household of the Empress was to share her fate, as she had been sentenced to death by Total Extermination.

Total Extermination was the direst sentence for treason in which the servants and family (and sometimes even entire villages, clans, and cities) were executed along with the perpetrators, and our Emperor was famous for it.

Many, including the former Chief Eunuch of the Harem, who had been implicated in the assassinations, as well as members of the royal family of Alderaan, a Kingdom of which the Empress was also a Princess, had evidently already been executed. I counted roughly 20 tortured souls hanging by their feet from scaffolding surrounding a platform. I think they had been hanging there for a few days, and I think some were still alive. I wasn’t sure; I didn’t look too closely.

Don’t think too little of me for not having wanted to examine the half-rotted bodies; I was already doing much better than most of my peers, some of whom had to be administered smelling salts by their servants.

Actually, I am very accustomed to seeing dead and dying bodies. Many religions practiced ritualistic killings, and as the earthly representatives of the Gods of those religions, we had to take part in them.

I was only five when I offered my first sacrifice. It was a sacrifice for the Goddess Liliti who was Goddess of Childbirth, and do you know, those priestesses of hers made me practice it so that I wouldn’t get it wrong when I had to do it in front of thousands of the Goddess’s devotees.

They brought a pregnant monkey to me, and I’d had to slit open its stomach and pull out the jelly-like little thing from its womb, and I was forced to do that three times before they let me do it in front of the audience of swaying, chanting, and occasionally vomiting pregnant women who had come to participate in the ceremony, to offer their own sacrifices, and to pray for the health of their unborn children.

After that, I performed ritualistic killings every month.

I was very good at it, you know. But I’m not going to boast about it now. I’m going to do that later.

It had been years since I last presided over one, and I’d forgotten the ugliness and the atrocious stench of it. It was terrible, and we were in the hot season, which made it worse, although to be frank, I was more bothered by the bugs. I hate bugs.

Those of us who hadn’t fainted put our scented handkerchiefs to our faces as we climbed the stands, which helped a little. It also helped to mitigate the force of the energies, so it was an effective distraction.

Not only us noble ladies were present. Almost everyone at Court were there, including the staff, and when the Empress walked out accompanied by her ladies in waiting, and with her daughter the young Imperial Princess clinging to her skirts, I heard all kinds of different noises: shouts and insults and booing and hissing and sighs and murmurs.

“I can’t believe it,” Xian murmured on my right, “They will really let the poor girl watch her mother die?”

I was so distracted by the violent surge of energy that pressed with renewed aggression on my body that I couldn’t respond. I was getting very twitchy but thankfully everyone looked as twitchy or more, and no one took any notice.

Then, the Emperor himself walked out onto the courtyard. He was flanked by his guards.

Everyone stood, and there was a profound silence, and with that silence, I realised something: The energies were gone; gone as though they had been sucked up into a vacuum or ingurgitated by some colossal black hole.

I was so amazed that I actually reached out and searched for it, which was something I didn’t even know I could do, but which I did then, purely by instinct.

Down in the courtyard, the Emperor’s head snapped up as though he’d heard or felt something- something like the call of a bird or the sting of an insect. He looked around. He was far, but I could make out that he was frowning. His eyes passed slowly over the encircling stands, and as they passed over where I was standing, suddenly, where there had been an irresistible pushing sensation from the force of the energies before, I felt an acute pulling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give me your thoughts, they help make the story better.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who expressed interest. New chapter for you. Please check tags before you continue. This is a dark story that contains dark themes, and Kylo is not a nice person. If you think you can't stomach dark Kylo, please leave.

It was almost painful, so intense and so insistent was this pulling, that I wanted to gasp, to cry, to come at its call. At the same time, I knew that I must not obey it. I perceived with growing horror that the phenomena of the mysteriously disappeared energies must be connected to the Emperor.

It felt like the longest time that his regard remained fixed in my direction, and I think I was perspiring with the effort not to go to him. But eventually his eyes passed over and away, and the voracious pulling receded.

He mounted the dais to his throne, sat, and gestured to the goaler to begin.

We sat after him.

The sentence was read and there was a good deal of renewed murmuring. Some of the women fainted all over again. I didn’t know why; I hadn’t been following as I was in such a state. I was also very distracted by the girl on my left, Hana, who was repeating rapidly under her breath a prayer of protection, although from what she needed protecting I cannot imagine as she was only to be a spectator and not a player in this execution.

Hana was a fetching girl with dark hair and pale skin although she had a weak constitution and was of middling talents. She spent an unhealthy amount of time bemoaning one thing or another, her lamentations often accompanied by litanies and prayers.

A puzzling choice for the concubinage, but then she was a Duchess of Corellia and distant relative of the Emperor on his father’s side, so perhaps some family politics were at work behind the scenes. At that moment, the Duchess was also rocking backwards and forwards, and the words of her prayers blended together into one long whistling hiss that made her sound like a kettle.

It was very distracting, and I missed whatever had been said in the reading of the sentence that was evidently so sensational.

It was taking a while for the crowd to comport themselves.

“What is it? What’s happening?” I asked Xian, who replied in a weak voice, “Total Extermination. Kyla.”

I was perplexed. I said, “I don’t understand. Do you mean Kyla’s also to be executed? But she’s his own daughter.”

The Empress had also been, if you will remember, accused of adultery, but everyone knew that was a false accusation.

Xian shook her head and wouldn’t answer. Her face was chalk-white, and she appeared on the verge of losing her lunch. The Empress Arta, who looked like she only just had sufficient strength to remain upright, was being helped up the platform. Her daughter, clinging to her, was crying for somebody, maybe her nurse or governess.

The Emperor descended his throne. One of his knights knelt and offered him the hilt of his greatsword.

Hana, unable to keep watching, turned to me with a choked cry. I looked at her and gave a little shake of my head. I think I still wore a perplexed expression.

I wanted to console her and tell her that he would surely pardon his own child.

And then they dragged the wretched girl from her mother and made her get on her knees and place her head on the block, and whatever I was planning to say stuck in my throat.

There was now nothing but silence from all the watching nobles, many of whom had their hands to their mouths. I had put my hand over my mouth also. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Hana’s face was in my shoulder, and she was chanting, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

Below, the Emperor put his arm out sideways and drew his ponderous sword one-handed. Then he, the Emperor, took a soldierly step forward and he swung the sword high so that the sun was caught on the blade at its zenith, just before the downward stroke, and it flashed brilliantly white for a second before it came falling, fell and-

I’m sure you don’t want to hear about how the Emperor killed his daughter and then his wife, but it’s important, so I will not omit it, but I will try to describe it as delicately as I can:

He took off their heads with his own sword.

I hope that was delicate enough for you. Forgive me if it wasn’t. My perspective is skewed by my own life experience. You see, in addition to animal sacrifices, I’ve also witnessed humans being ritually killed.

I won’t lie that this impacted me very differently. I was horrified.

In the wake of the Emperor’s brand of justice, the solemn clapping began. Justice, however ugly, had been served, and had to be extolled. Two rows down, Jiya was discreetly weeping. Many of the women of the harem were weeping or trying not to; those who had known and loved the Imperial Princess in spite of her mother.

The rest of us, now that the awful novel act was over, irreversibly over, slowly retook our courage and courtly stoicism.

Xian let out a long exhale. Xian had also seen people die before. Public executions were not uncommon in Aeos Prime, but their favoured method of execution was by hanging, so they were generally bloodless, although she told me that once, she saw a very heavy man accidentally decapitated in the drop.

“Oh my,” breathed Xian before shakily saying, “I don’t believe anyone will want to commit treason for a long while…”

Which I imagine was exactly what the Emperor intended by this lurid spectacle.

“What a silly woman,” I pronounced. I was sounding shaky myself. I was in a cold sweat. “Of course, _she_ would order an assassination.”

I think the way I said it made her frown at me and ask for clarification. And Hana who was still on my shoulder was listening quite intently also.

“Eh,” I said dismissively, my voice growing stronger, “she was a silly little wimp. If I want someone dead, you best believe I’ll do it myself. Then at least I’ll have earned the consequences, and I can die without shame even if I fail. Besides, if she’d made herself drown that poor baby with her own two hands instead of arranging for someone else to do it like the wimp she was, who knows, she might have taken pity on it and called off the whole thing, and then she and her daughter would still be alive. She deserved what she got.”

“Oh my,” said Xian again, and she looked at me with the same wide eyes. “I’ll try never to offend you.”

I realised I’d overdone it, and added very sincerely, “I’m saddened that Kyla had to share her mother’s bad fate, it was truly horrible, poor lamb...”

But the damage had been done.

I really grew to regret that plucky speech, in more ways than one. In my defence, I was quite shocked by the deaths, and my natural reaction to such things has always been to cover up my horror by heavy layers of ridicule and disparagement.

What I’d said made the rounds and I was duly made fun of as soon as the bad taste had faded. After that, if someone inadvertently happened to cause me annoyance, they would pretend to run away from me, or plead that I show mercy and not kill them. They thought it was hilarious.

-

The Chief Eunuch Hux came to me a week after the execution and asked me sullenly if it was true what he’d heard.

I asked him to repeat what it was he’d heard, and he said, “You told your Sisters that if you were made Empress, you would sacrifice your rivals and their children to the Gods. It sounded so preposterous that I told myself it was impossible that Her Holy Highness could have said this, but on further reflection, I thought that maybe it wasn’t so impossible…”

“Don’t worry,” I said cheerfully, after I’d had a good laugh. “You’re not responsible for me anymore. Even if I did sacrifice any or all of my blockheaded Sisters and their imperial children, and got my head cut off for it, _your_ head will remain on your shoulders.”

“So, did you say that or no?”

“Of course, I didn’t!” I scoffed, and then I recounted a less unsavoury version of what did actually happen, ending with: “And anyway, when have I ever given you the impression that I aspire to be Empress? I aspire to be going back home in a year if you must know.”

He raised his brow. “The One Year Disgrace? You intend to leave in disgrace?”

The One Year Disgrace stipulated that any of the Concubines in the Emperor’s harem who had not been visited by him in a year and who was not already pregnant were free to leave. No one had ever left in disgrace, and I fully intended to be the first.

“Maybe he’ll even go on another campaign,” I said wishfully. “Then I’ll leave in his absence.”

“If the Emperor has plans to launch a new campaign, it hasn’t reached my ears,” said Hux doubtfully. “Even if he does, he might bring the harem with him, and then what will you do?” He stuck his tongue in his cheek and sighed, then drew himself up, glowering. “Why am I even letting myself consider your implausible scheme? I am, as you have just been kind enough to remind me, Your Holy Highness, no longer responsible for your wellbeing. Have you told Malcor of your plan?”

Malcor was Snoke’s recent successor. Snoke, the former Chief Eunuch of the Harem, had been condemned and executed along with the Empress; his body was still rotting in that courtyard. I didn’t know Malcor very well. Before his promotion, he had assisted primarily with the concubines and rarely interacted with the Hopefuls, although he was sometimes present during our examinations.

I said, “No, and you’re not to tell him either.”

“Or what?” said Hux, who looked like he was only barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes upwards. “Going to kill me with your own two hands?”

I threw my hands up. “Nobody respects me here!” I complained. “Least of all you! You’re always accusing me of being ungovernable, who do you think I learned it from?”

Obviously, I didn’t learn it from Hux – I’ve always been capricious, as princesses go; blame it on my brothers, if anything – but it did the trick and softened him.

“I care about you, Rey,” he said, “You already know that. Of course, I won’t tell him.”

“If you cared about me, I’d be on a ship home by now,” I said. The bitterness was building up in my heart. I hadn’t even written to my family to inform them of my failure, although it was probably unrequired. I was sure they already knew. An imperial messenger would have delivered them the news of my appointment by now.

They may even have known of it beforehand. The Emperor wasn’t the only one with spies. My family too had spies everywhere, and I’m only being factual when I say that we’re much more connected than he can ever be. Every place of worship in the Empire is practically a lair of spies for Jakku.

-

Two days later, I received a letter from my mother.

My mother only ever visited me once, during my first year at court. She came with my two youngest brothers, Black and White. I had hoped Silver would come but Mother said that he was too old. My mother and brothers were invited to stay in the harem along with other visiting families. They were greeted by the Empress and then all of us Hopefuls came out and danced for them, and some of the concubines came out and danced also.

When the presentation was over, those of us who had visitors were allowed to join them for a little while.

I pranced over to my brothers and we chased each other around until I had tackled White who was the smallest and slowest. “Tell me everything!” I demanded once I’d released him. “How’s Silver? How’s Papa? How’s my Beebee? Do they miss me? Have you missed me? I’ve missed you all so much!”

“Silver stole Beebee and won’t give him back,” White whined. “You said I could have him!”

“You shouldn’t have let him steal from you then,” I chided. “Anyway, I didn’t say you could _have_ him, I said you could help me take care of him while I’m at court.”

“And I would be, if Silver hadn’t taken him!”

“If Silver took him, it must be for a good reason. Maybe you’re too young to take care of a tiger. You’d only forget to have him fed and bathed. What if he tried to eat you?”

“I wouldn’t forget!” he yelled, alarming some poor passing eunuch. “I can handle him! Only last month I killed a feathered bull myself! Tell her, Black!”

Black said, “Yesterday, you asked to be put to bed with a song. And the priests tied up that bull for you.”

We laughed and White ran off in tears back to Mother.

I know my mother was pretending to be happy to see me, but she had the air of someone highly distracted and highly dejected. She kept looking at those concubines with rounded bellies and by the end of the visit, she was barely speaking.

Before she left, she said to me, “Rey,” and then she looked down at her hands.

“Yes, Mother,” I said. I was affected by her poor mood. I was in a poor mood too. I was very disappointed because I expected to be able to play with my brothers and maybe even to be able to leave the palace to explore the Capitol, but I hadn't been given more than a few measly hours with them, and I had been forbidden from leaving the harem grounds.

Mother looked up at me again. “You dance very well, Rey,” she said. “But I knew you would.” She heaved a sigh. There was something strange under her melancholy, something raw and desperate.

“Try not to attract any unwanted attention,” she said. “And any attention should be unwanted, you understand?”

I didn’t really understand, but I dutifully said that I did.

She never came back again. So much for the promise to visit me every year.

As for the letter she sent me, I didn’t open it. I was too ashamed. I stopped writing to them.

-

Not long after the conversation with Hux, the Chief Eunuch Malcor came to me. He was admitted into my room by my girl-servant, Rose. Rose had come with me from Jakku and I was very fond of her. She was my younger by three years, and she had been gifted to my family by the worshippers of Sebris, the God of ice and snow. She was originally from Hays, and she doesn’t remember a thing about her home except that it was very cold and that children often went missing. Presumably stolen by the worshippers of their cold Ice God to be sold into slavery.

My immediate thought was that I had been betrayed by that damnable Hux, but I didn’t let my thought betray me. I offered Malcor sourcane and white plum cordial and poured it for him myself while Rose set a plate of pomegranate cubes and mini glazed puffcakes on the table.

Of course, he couldn’t resist the sweets. Xian told me that it was a well-known fact in her homeland that eunuchs replaced sex with food and ate as lustily as men made love. I could believe it. Malcor was politely stuffing his flabby face. The rings on his pudgy fingers flashed as he ate.

I signalled for more food to be brought to us.

After the usual pleasantries, he set about to business. He had also heard the ridiculous threats I was said to have made, only, the version he’d heard had me supposedly promising to drown babies with my own two hands and to slit my rivals’ throats with my ceremonial knife.

I didn’t tell him that I did actually have a ceremonial knife with me; he was very upset, and I didn’t want to cause him any more distress. I had more than just one knife, actually. I had brought three sharp and gorgeous specimens, and they were probably lying at the very bottom of one of my trunks along with other religious paraphernalia that had travelled with me from Jakku and that I never had the occasion to use.

Malcor thought it was dangerous talk and wanted me to put it right.

“Ah, Your Holiness,” he said, butchering my title a little, “Now’s not the time for such frightening words to be circulating within the palace… If it ever reaches the Emperor’s ears…”

The implication frightened me.

“I will set things straight immediately with my Sisters,” I said, sitting up very straight. “And you, Your Excellency, for all our sakes, you’ve heard me deny it vehemently. I deny it now. I never said such things. The Gods know my character…”

“Why, that’s the worst part,” he cried, “that such blasphemous words be imputed to you, of all people. The holy Princess...!”

I murmured vaguely, “Truly, it is blasphemy… An insult to the Gods to insinuate thus… For it to… To be imputed to me, their earthly representative…”

“Blasphemy, yes!” he said, growing pale. “An offence against the Emperor _and_ the Gods. I was almost struck down when I heard this evil rumour, these blighted words… I’m ashamed that I had to repeat it to you… I had to force myself…”

I nodded. I gathered myself and drew from deep within me all the things I still remembered about how to be a religious leader. I condemned the evil rumour and asserted my righteousness and invulnerability and praised him for bringing it to my attention (and thus to the Gods’ attention), and by the end, he was convinced that I was a deeply wronged, very holy princess.

He left with many bows and sacred signs, signs of his primary God Nerinus, the castrated God of the eunuchs to whom my brother the Prince Black was High Priest.

After I had sent Malcor off endowed with whatever pleasing benedictions I could passably remember and pronounce on him, I went back to the table and there sat in exhausted silence, considering everything that had just passed.

It seemed that an opportunity and a threat had both come knocking on my door, and both had to be dealt with in the same way.

I knew what I had to do to survive the next year untouched in every possible sense. I had erred in discarding religion, which I now appreciated to be like priceless armour; impregnable. The error could still be corrected. Malcor was already proving to be more persuasible than Hux, and he feared my spiritual rank.

Now I just had to keep a low profile. I had to become the most pious, the most retiring, the most boring member of court there ever was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How fucked up is our Kylo?  
> Do you think Rey will make it one year?  
> If you enjoyed this chapter/story, leave me a comment etc etc


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sat down to work on a dramione, and ended up with a new chapter for Reyne instead. Here you go.

My resolution was put to the test almost immediately.

The new concubines were asked to dance for the first time as a group for the Emperor and some visiting royals from Corellia and Ka-Zook. We all knew he was going to choose one of us to spend the night with ( _spend the night_ being a loosely applied expression here- he never actually spent more than an hour or so with anyone), and that made us all very nervous, Hana especially.

Her uncle, the High Commander Ciutabak of Ka-Zook, who had been a bosom friend of the Emperor’s deceased father, was to be present at this banquet.

“Ohh,” she moaned, “I don’t know what I would do if I were to be picked. I don’t know what I would do if I were to be passed over! Which would be the more disgraceful? Oh! I don’t know what to do!”

“Just dance and don’t make a mess of it!” I hissed. I wasn’t feeling charitable towards her because I was sure that she was the one behind all those pesky rumours about me, and besides, something else was happening to make me uneasy only I couldn’t tell what, which made the uneasiness deepen.

Hana moaned some more and fretted about the dance, but I was getting into position and thankfully positioned nowhere near her, so I didn’t have to listen.

After one of the concubines had finished playing some sad song on her flute, we came out dancing.

The Emperor and his guests- all men, were dining. Their faces were awhirl as I whirled. The Emperor had stopped eating to watch us. He was watching us very carefully, his chin lightly resting on his fingers.

The feeling of unease grew. I didn’t dare tap into the forces, so I had not a clue as to whether they were still around or if he had sucked them up again, but I saw his gaze passing methodically from one dancer to another, and my skin crawled at the thought of his terrible thirsty eyes on me.

I whirled again. I imagined myself as a spinning bug as I whirled, spinning myself into some invisible, hidden state.

The music changed. His eyes were now moving onto Meiraq, ashen-haired Meiraq with her easy, perpetual smile.

We turned and flipped our fans into the air and caught them. We tilted our heads to look over our opposite shoulders, reaching long with our arms as we did so. Over the tips of my outstretched fingers, I watched the Emperor.

Now his eyes had passed to Xian. Xian was on my immediate right. I would be the next.

I looked away. I tried to make myself invisible.

I tried to quiet my heart, but for some reason I couldn’t stop picturing the Emperor as a voracious mouth, like a sarlacc, that rare and dangerous desert beast composed of mouth and stomach. Indiscriminately sucking all life in the vicinity into their waiting mouths, they could grow unchecked under the sand for decades. Often, by the time any of them were reported to or discovered by the bounty hunters, they were grown into nightmarish proportions.

With that awful representation of the Emperor as a sarlacc in my head, I was getting to be more afraid by the moment.

He was no longer looking at Xian. He was distracted. He had felt the tangible stream of fear. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew, and I knew that _he_ didn’t know yet who was in such fear.

And such a stream of fear. So much fear it seemed impossible that it was all mine.

Any moment now, he would begin to trace it back to me. Any moment now, I would feel that forceful pulling. Any moment now-

Someone hit the floor.

My head shot up. The Emperor was looking at someone else: at a dancer who had fallen.

I followed his gaze.

Hana.

He raised his hand. The music stopped.

The Emperor leaned forward slightly. “Why, Ciutabak, that’s Hana, your favourite niece,” he said casually, pointing the fallen dancer out to a large beefy man with a voluptuous moustache attired in a stiff uniform covered in medals.

The man, Ciutubak, presumably, glowered. He didn’t respond. Hana was picking herself up.

The Emperor continued, “Cousin Jon wrote to me a year ago, did you know, demanding that I send him back Hana. Until I received his message, I’d fully forgotten that his daughter was in my palace!”

The High Commander Ciutabak looked as angry as a volcano.

The Emperor Kylo smiled with delight as if he felt his story was being very well received. “I forgot to send him my response,” he said, “and your sister sent me a letter of her own pleading that I not keep Hana in the Capitol, for the sake of the family. Hana had already been promised to someone. Hana was her only surviving child. Hana wasn’t doing well in the Capitol. And so on and so forth. Pages and pages. You can imagine the rest of it. I’d forgotten about Hana again, truth be told. But I was glad to have been reminded. I like having my family close to me.”

“Family? We all know you mean to say _toy_ ,” Hana’s uncle finally spoke up to say. His voice was rumbling like a bear’s. Or a volcano’s. “You never liked having your toys taken away from you when you were a boy. I remember you chose to damage them rather than share them. These young women aren’t toys, Kylo.”

All the other men at the table fidgeted slightly.

“Oh, don’t be dour,” replied the Emperor. “Who speaks of these women as toys here but you? Who speaks of damaging here but you? I cherish all these young women. I send them back with spoils when I’m done spoiling them. I send them back none the worse for wear, to whoever wants to with them play next. One could even remark that I’m learning to share.” He waved languidly in our direction. “Thank you, my lovely companions, you may retire. Except you, Cousin Hana. You stay. Sing us something.”

I glanced pityingly at Hana as we left. Her face was flushed pink and she was shaking. She moved to the centre and began to warble. Her voice was thick with tears.

“She’s a terrible dancer _and_ a terrible songstress,” we heard the Emperor drawl. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll let you know whether she’s equally terrible in bed.”

Poor Hana was the first fair fruit to be plucked, and one by one, the rest of the new Concubines soon followed after. Within the month, he had taken and tasted all.

All except me.

-

I realised as soon as she fell that I had been saved by Hana.

Saved by Hana, poor pigeon-hearted Hana! Imagine that! Her fear had camouflaged mine and bought me time. Or so I felt.

Quite possibly, I was never in any danger of discovery at all.

Actually, I don’t know why I was so afraid of being discovered by the Emperor- and discovered to have done what, even? I couldn’t explain it. Even now I can’t explain to you the logic behind my feelings. But I was genuinely afraid!

I was even more determined to quit the harem.

Before, I had not wanted to be a concubine because my prideful father had been supremely against the prospect, and I wanted to please my father in the simple way a child does, but now I had my own reasons.

Hana’s uncle could not save her from the Emperor. My father would not be able to save me from the Emperor. I was going to have to save myself, via the One Year Disgrace.

Speaking of disgrace, I didn’t realise until then just how profoundly I would come to agree with my father’s opinions of the Emperor, nor how profoundly I would come to understand exactly what he meant when he’d said that the Emperor meant to disgrace us all by calling me to Court.

Having but ten years the day the official summons was put in my royal father’s hand, I readily proscribed to his opinions without really understanding them.

I remember how he’d seethed, and how angry he’d been, and how furious at our spies for having failed to catch this, and how furious at the priests of the various religions I was symbolically head of for having failed to dissuade the Emperor against asking for me. My father never actually used the word whore when he implied that that was what I had been called to Court to be - he was far too well-bred for that - but he might as well have had.

It was very unnatural for an Alpha to keep this lifestyle of bedding multiple Omegas the way our Emperor did. That was not to say that Alphas remained virgins or sexually inexperienced until their mating. Of course, they slept around first. And nobody minded not least because it was very difficult for an Alpha to impregnate a woman that wasn’t his One True Mate, regardless of whether she was an Omega or no, and even when that happened, the baby almost never made it past two months in the womb.

But the concubinage system had been in place for about ten years by the time I came to this realisation for myself, and by then, our Emperor had had three children, two of which were dead, one by his hand, and it looked very likely that he was soon to have a fourth child.

There were always pregnant concubines, which I suppose is another testament to the Emperor’s virility, although most did not remain pregnant for very long. I think for each liveborn imperial child, there must have been about twenty failed pregnancies.

He did have that fourth child, incidentally, by a concubine two years my senior.

She was a lesser Dathomiri warrior princess named Talina who had a proud, sneering face, and a confident, graceful bearing. Within a month of the birth she was made Imperial Consort, and a month after that promotion, was crowned Empress.

The Emperor was truly a strange man. He allowed his new wife to sometimes hunt with his party and to train in combat with his knights (under the watchful eye of the eunuchs of course), and twice gifted her arms instead of gems, although he apparently did not tolerate her outlandish opinions, and he rudely spent their wedding night with another woman.

The new Empress had given him a girl, another Kyla, but unlike the unstable Arta or the meek Jiya, she was far from apologetic about it. Despite the father’s lack of enthusiasm for the child, she was confident her Kyla would one day inherit the throne. “Girls are stronger than boys,” she was often heard to say, among other things like, “A man may bleed once in war and you’ll never hear the end of it, but a woman could bleed all her life long and no one would ever hear her complain about it.”

I’m not sure how true that is; I complain three days a month, every month without fail, and there are even others like Hana who will also lie whining in a heated bed and swear that they are dying.

Admittedly, I have never once heard Talina complain about her bleeding, and according to the palace physicians, she made not a sound during accouchement, which I was assured is a rather impressive feat.

Everybody was very excited by the rapid ascension of Talina, and all said that if there existed a person who could persuade the Emperor to settle down with a forever-mate, it might be her. Amusingly, she did try- by making the first bite, although unfortunately, he, far from returning the bite, did not take kindly to her presumptuousness, and had her confined to her quarters until long after the mark she had given him had healed and disappeared.

Nobody could decide what to make of the whole thing because the Emperor didn’t make his personal sentiments public, and nobody could get a read on him.

I thought it very admirable and very amusing, what she did, and I was very sorry that it had failed.

Lucky that I didn’t bank on the slim possibility of their joining to get me out of the harem.

Towards the end of my first year, that possibility was looking more like an impossibility, and the Emperor was still sleeping noncommittally with all the young women of his harem.

Each one came shamefully (or proudly) back from his quarters in the same evening they were there summoned - sometimes in the same hour - and each one received, the next morning, some glittering token of appreciation.

He was surely not exaggerating when he’d told Hana’s uncle that he sent the women home laden with spoils. Without fail, whomever the Emperor took to bed would receive a present the next morning from the eunuchs who gave the gift on behalf of His Imperial Majesty.

I watched Hana and Xian and Kira and Meiraq and all the rest of my cohort receive their gifts: rings and bangles and studded halos and painted fans and strings of pearls and loose gems, with increasing satisfaction. It felt like I was in an arena, with an opponent who believed he was playing a crude game of catch-them-all against docile, brightly coloured prey, when in reality, the game being played (and being won by me) was hide-for-the-hour.

Actually, I found evading the Emperor to be easier and rather more boring than I expected.

Don’t let the story of the dance that Hana did make a mess of lead you to believe that we spend the better part of our court lives performing for the Emperor. We were not some basely-born troupe of entertainers; we were captives of the noblest orders.

And as exhibits of the Emperor’s political power and military might, we were only very seldom called on as a group to his presence, and at that chiefly when the Emperor wanted to make an impression or to torment someone as he did that night with the High Commander Ciutabak.

Most of the time, we were left to our devices, although he would often request the presence of a favourite (or even a random) woman who would, for a short while, have the honour of being on his arm at a banquet or at a ball or any other event of that nature.

The lucky lady would receive the invitation in the form of a red scroll delivered by a eunuch-messenger. On it would be written the name of the event she was to make herself available for as his partner, as well as some additional details pertaining to the dress. If the scroll was blank, it meant simply that she was wanted in his chambers that evening.

Thanks to my having earlier secured the Chief Eunuch Malcor as an ally, I never had to worry about receiving the red scroll. While most in my position might have pressed to be given extra exposure with the Emperor, I very softly pressed him the other way.

No, the real danger lay in the harem, where the Emperor Kylo would come himself to choose a bedmate. He did that periodically, and usually without forewarning.

I learnt that this was his habit the hard way: by being caught off my guard when it first happened.

-

I was, in that particular evening, in the hot room, the one with all the shimmering blue tiles that were always moist to the touch from the steaming fountains, and I was recumbent by the sweating bed of ice chips.

My mind was on my pet, Beebee, who was the creature I missed most from my old life (after Silver, of course). Beebee was a sunstripe tiger, a rare long-lived breed of domesticable tiger so named for their yellow and white stripes. He was only still a cub of fourteen months when I left.

Silver, in his last letter to me some months back, had assured me that Beebee still remembered me, still slept only in my chambers, and still would not suffer any but the family to handle him.

I was dwelling sentimentally on the unwavering loyalty of my pet, and at the same time, I was also seriously contemplating rolling directly into the ice bed, because the room was swelteringly hot, and I was so lazy and sleepy, and I anticipated that the cold would feel good on my skin.

I heard the sounds of boots, and everyone in the room startled- that is to say, Xian and Kira and I startled, because we were the only ones still there. Everyone else was reading or nodding off in the gold-pillared music room, or else sitting in their own bedrooms having their hair oiled and plaited by their girl-servants in preparation for sleep.

I heard Kira’s intake of breath and Xian’s muffled swear. In concert, we scrambled to our feet, pulled our clothing more demurely about ourselves, and bent slightly at the knees in a curtsey.

Right away, without planning to do it, I imagined spinning myself into a cocoon of quiet invisibility.

It wasn’t something I had practiced, or even given any thought to, but I just very instinctively knew I wanted to do it, and I did. I imagined myself as an insentient spinning bug.

The Emperor entered and for a moment, just before I was able to avert my gaze, I saw his eyes dragging themselves down the no doubt luscious sight of my Sisters in their wet, clinging silks.

Very intently, I imagined myself to be the bug. I quieted my mind and imagined a thick soundproof wall of woven white thread, as thick as the length of a man’s arm, forming around me, and to give this vision some of my selfdom, I imagined myself to be dancing endless pirouettes as I spun this cocoon of mine.

The world had assumed a strange blurry quality. I heard the Emperor speaking with Xian and Kira, but the sound of his voice was hazy and indistinct. I heard them respond. Their voices also were echoing and garbled.

When I felt daring enough to look again, I raised my head and watched.

It was a strange and frankly, disconcerting scene. The Emperor minded me not at all, and stranger still, my friends seemed also to have forgotten me. As though I had never been in the room talking with them for the past hour and a half. As though I had been plucked out of space and memory!

I watched them, the whole while imagining myself to be the bug, and I didn’t stop until after their blurry forms had departed, and I walked very slowly (still imagining myself to be the bug) until I was back in the sanctum of my own room.

I went into the inner chamber where the bed was, and I sat on the floor beside it, out of view of the doorway, and sinking down, allowed myself to recover.

It wasn’t an easy recovery. I was on the floor for a while, groaning with my forehead against the fibres of the rug, and to my girl-servant’s dismay, I vomited all over it very shortly after. I also got a horrendous headache that staid with me for hours.

But it was worth it! Whatever it was I had done (and I wasn’t even sure what exactly I had done), it had worked. He had not even looked at me. In a room of only three women, he had passed over me. As though I had really been invisible!

As though he thought he was playing catch-them-all in a game of hide-for-the-hour!

Come to think of it, that was probably the exact moment I first came up with that analogy. What do you think of it? Not bad, eh?

From then on, I played hide-the-hour. All my evenings were spent hiding in plain sight, in the most crowded room I could find, and if I couldn’t avoid being in the same room as the Emperor, I made myself the invisible bug. If I had to dance for him, if I had to eat at his table, I did so, going through all the necessary motions, while I spun, in my mind, an impenetrable cocoon around myself.

In this way, I moved, one slow and successful day at a time, closer to the end of the metaphorical hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, Rey made it another chapter.
> 
> What do you think of our Rey and Kylo so far? Who's winning?
> 
> *I use the archaic 'staid' in place of 'stayed' as the past tense of 'to stay' because I like it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I sit down to work on a dramione and end up with another chapter of Reyne. Enjoy:

Two weeks before the day I would be able to claim my freedom and leave in happy disgrace, a famous travelling troupe from Bespin came to the Capitol, and they were invited to the palace to perform over a period of five days.

The whole morning of one of those days was given over to all the women and children in the harem for a private show. The roster of acts and exhibits was to include giant kites crawling with acrobats, hawks that intercepted arrows mid-air, a new machine that could make paintings in the sky, and other impressive things like that. Everyone attended the day with excitement and impatience and wouldn’t stop talking about it.

I declined to go, but I charitably gave my girl-servant, Rose, permission to join them.

That morning, I dallied in bed for an hour after waking, then, rising, I dressed myself and did my own hair, and left my room with the most ebullient step. For the first time in months, the harem would be empty of my peers, and I relished the opportunity to be alone. I had spent almost a year keeping my head down and pretending to be dull and spiritual, and that was tiring work. I wanted to be alone, to feel free of the burden of pretending; to be me.

I was the only concubine who chose to stay back but there were still a number of remaining slaves and servants within the harem. Once they saw me, they came up and respectfully begged to help me with my toilette. So, they thought I looked dreadfully untidy. Fair enough.

“No, never mind that,” I told them, and ordered them to under no circumstances bother me. I would call on them if I needed them, I said, and unless I called, they were not to let themselves be seen by me. They readily agreed and scurried off.

The Harem’s gardens, the geographical heart of the Harem, were truly enchanting, if I must be truthful. That day, in happy solitariness, I found them to be even more so.

After I had also chased away the gardeners and attendants there, I walked around the empty gardens and courtyards in my own company.

I crossed the bridges and looked at the fat fishes wiggling in the shade, and I crouched by the flower beds and plucked the choicest heads and tried to affix them to my hair. I had not the skill of the servants, and they wouldn’t stay on, so I tried to make wreaths out of them to garland the statues with, but I was even worse at wreath-making.

When I got bored of the flowers, I went to the miniature lakes and pushed the little wooden sailboats across it, along the way stopping to heckle the argoras in their tall cage. Those pretty cerulean-feathered birds are supposed to bring good luck on whomever they descend upon, and the ones kept in the harem were so greedy and so tame that they would alight on anyone who stood immobile for long enough. I never go in their cage. I think birds are filthy.

I was enjoying every scented breeze and every tinkling drop of water on the pools and every swish of tree branches feathering in the wind.

I was in such high spirits. I was feeling so happy and so at peace with the world.

For a few hours, I could be me, Rey. Not Her Holy Highness the Princess Rey of the Holy Lands of Jakku, or Princess-Concubine Rey, or Rey the invisible bug, but just Rey.

My stroll became a little prance and then a waltz, and soon I was dancing and leaping and twirling with all my might.

I jumped and touched the rows of hanging lanterns under the lattice pavilions, making them swing. I leapt on stone walls and ran up and down their lengths, balanced on the tips of my toes. I imitated the argoras and soared from the height of the mossy boulders, catching myself on one leg with the other leg upraised, and I flung my arms out and made wide jumps like a deer. Wide, impossible jumps and impossible leaps and impossible landings. I was hanging suspended in the air for seconds! I touched the ground like a bird!

I was using the mysterious force within me to help me do these things, and the more I used it in my dance, the wilder, and the happier I became.

I was beginning to perspire a little and my hair was coming loose from all the poorly fastened pins and ribbons and pearls, and I didn’t care. I shook my hair out and freed it of all the heavy ornaments. That felt even better! I laughed in my heart, and I laughed out loud, and a stream of joy flowed within and through me, and it felt that all the world was joyful with me.

I landed once more. I turned and turned and turned and I contorted my body and sent my limbs flying, and my hair sweeping the ground like the branches of the weeping trees, and the many layers of my skirts fanning out like the petals of an opening flower.

I thought briefly about asking one of the servants to bring a lyre and play with her back to me so I could have music to dance to, but I was too lazy to walk all the way back.

I contented myself with humming a song I was working on for the cello. It was a ballad composed for a play in which the title character, a Zeltron nobly-born woman, is tricked into giving her hand in marriage to the cruel and treacherous General that had her beloved killed.

I didn’t really care for the story - I’m not interested in tragic romances - but the song was full and different and dramatic, and I liked the tempo change.

I closed my eyes and hummed and danced uninhibitedly, something I had not allowed myself to do for years. For years and years.

I suppose that once, during the arrest of the Empress Arta, I had let myself be momentarily free, but that experience paled in comparison. That had been someone else’s emotions.

I remembered the sound of the boots and how they echoed throughout the broad hallways, and the delicious fear of the Empress that zinged the very blood in my heart.

Now I was dancing to my own heart, and my heart was content.

I slowed. I made my movements longer. Fuller. More graceful. I tried to evoke the dark romance of the ballad.

But I still heard, as though my imagination was bringing it into existence, the anxiety-inducing echo of boots. Not multiple echoing boots, but the heavy tread of one pair of boots.

I frowned and opened my eyes, and there was the Emperor in the garden with me. Coming to me. Crossing the bridge.

Immediately, I dropped into a curtsey. Immediately, I withdrew into myself and became Rey the bug. Immediately, I began spinning the web of invisibility.

I heard the slow and assured _step-step-step_ of the boots, and then they came into view of my downcast gaze, followed swiftly by long legs and torso. He was in front of me. I watched his arm bend at the elbow; and then the Emperor’s hand was coming to my face, and his fingers grasped my chin, and I was forced to look at him.

I was looking right into his face, nearer to him than I had ever had cause or should ever have cause to be.

There flashed in my head the image of a cocoon. I saw it with an ugly hole in it, like a child had come, and chancing upon the hard shell, snatched it up and poked a stick through it to get to the unlucky bug.

At the same time, I had a rather incongruous and impersonal thought: that our Emperor really was cruelly handsome.

“Ah,” I said to myself, “I see what they mean, these Sisters of mine. That scar does look rather attractive on him.”

His dark eyes scanned my face. His eyes weren’t black as I initially thought them, but actually a very dark blue with specks of silvery grey. They looked like those paintings of the galaxy I’d once seen in my father’s library and thought very pretty and then very boring, once the master-librarian confused my admiration for scholarly interest and started lecturing me about gas or something.

The Emperor’s eyes were boring into mine. His pupils wavered as he studied me. “I remember you,” he breathed, sounding wondering and a little perplexed. “You’re the priestess.”

I had the wild thought that I should deny it. I could claim to be a servant, a mischievous servant who had been allowed to borrow her mistress’s clothes for an hour. Maybe he would believe it and let me go.

And if he didn’t and decided to execute me for lying to him? What if he chopped off my head immediately? That would be terrible. But what if he _did_ believe the story and let me go? What if-

“You live in my harem,” he said. He still sounded perplexed. His brows were beginning to draw together. “You’re one of my Concubines…”

“Yes, Sire,” I said, abandoning my half-witted scheme with great sadness.

At length, he let me go.

“Where is everybody?” he asked sharply, looking still at me, as if he thought I would disappear were he to take his eyes off me.

“They’re watching a performance outside the Harem, Sire,” I replied, “by your leave.” I tried not to look at him accusingly, but I felt that he should have known that no one would be here, having his own self approved the reason for their absence.

“Then I have come at the wrong time,” he said to himself, scoffing for some reason.

I was silently and morosely agreeing with his observation.

The Emperor curled his mouth into a piqued sneer as he continued holding a conversation with himself. “The one time I oblige myself to unpremeditatedly visit my children, they are not present. Am I expected to remember what my household is doing at all times?”

I noticed that he held a lacquered box in his other hand. It had big-bodied insects in bright, primary colours painted all over it. A gift for a child.

“Why are you not with the rest of them?” he asked suspiciously. His head twitched as though he desired to turn his head to look around us, but his eyes remained trained on mine. “Why are you dancing here alone in such a state of dishabille? Where are all the servants?”

“If it please Your Imperial Majesty, I will call for them,” I said. I was wishing with my whole heart that I had not sent them away.

He stared at me for a bit. Finally, he said, “I asked you three questions, and you answered none.” He laughed shortly, his voice descending in tone. “Yes, I do begin to remember you. The _Holy_ Princess.”

I wished people would stop getting my title wrong.

“Yes, Sire,” I murmured. I was wondering what he found so funny about this horrible meeting. It was a horrible, horrible meeting.

He tilted his head slightly, scanning me. “What is your given name?” he asked.

“Rey,” I answered. I did not enjoy the way he was looking at me. “Let me go directly and call the servants to attend you, Sire.”

He nodded. “Do that… Rey.”

-

I curtsied and walked very slowly backwards away from him with respectfully lowered eyes until I was sure I was out of sight, and then I turned tail and ran.

I ran indoors and called loudly for the servants in a panicked voice until they all came hurrying out as though I had been screaming that there was a fire. “The Emperor is here!” I hissed accusingly. “Did you not hear him come?”

They stammered their nervous excuses. They hadn’t heard him. The eunuch-guards who had let him in had not informed them. And they’d shut themselves in their quarters like I’d told them to.

“Well, what are you doing yammering at me for!” I cried. “He’s still here. In the gardens. I left him by the Amaranthine Bridge. Go to him. He wants you. Go. Go!”

They picked up their skirts and ran as if from a fire.

I stopped one of them. “Collect my pearls and ribbons for me. I dropped them everywhere in the gardens. Everywhere, you understand? Wait. You will find a long ribbon in velvet with a diamond at its centre by the argoras’ cage. I remember definitively that I left it there. I was using it to tease the birds. You will also find a string of grey pearls near the Amaranthine Bridge. Find those two first and bring them straight to me, they were gifts from my favourite brother.” And to another servant, I beckoned. “You come with me and do my toilette.”

She hurried after me to my room.

“How shall I fashion you today, Your Holy Highness?” she asked.

I shook my head distractedly. I kept looking towards the door. I hated that none of the doors in the harem locked.

“Do you want to keep this gown, Ma’am, or would you like to change out of it?” pressed the servant.

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

She answered, “Half-eleven. Would you like to change for lunch?”

I nodded and absent-mindedly told her to go and pick any gown, and she moved away in excitement.

I remembered that the servants love being told to pick out their ladies’ gowns. If you give them that privilege, they will waste fifteen minutes just staring at all your gowns, then bring their choice out very slowly and solemnly to you for your approval, and after they have lovingly put you into it, they will walk behind you for however many hours you spend in the gown, while whispering to their fellows that they were the one to pick it, and looking at you (and your gown) with pride enough to rival that of a new mother's.

I didn’t have time for any of that.

Raising my voice, I told her to bring me my pink tiered gown, and she came back with the gown and a slightly disappointed look, and began to undress me.

-

While I was sitting in front of the mirror in my pink gown, having my hair brushed out, there was a rap on the door.

It was the girl whom I’d directed to pick up my things, and she was accompanied by my girl-servant, Rose. I could hear, in the hallway behind them, the swishing of skirts and the light clicks of sandals on the marble; women laughing and chattering excitedly. The happy showgoers had returned.

“Is he gone?” I asked sharply. “The Emperor, is he gone?”

“Yes, Your Holy Highness,” quaked the girl.

I slumped down with relief. “And my hair ornaments, you found them?”

She deposited, on my commode, the grey velvet ribbon with the diamond, as well as some of the other ribbons she had found, and gold hair pins and pearl-tipped hair pins, and slim strings of ivory pearls.

“And my grey pearls?” I asked, scanning the pile with a keen eye as Rose began their organisation.

“The Emperor took your grey pearls, Ma'am,” said the girl, quaking visibly. She was looking at me fearfully. No doubt she knew how preposterous her excuse sounded.

“What?” I snapped. I was quite insulted that she would tell me such an obvious fib. “What would he want with my pearls? If you’re lying to me, I’ll make sure you lose a hand.”

“Please, Your Holy Highness, your servant would not lie to you. I saw your pearls in his hand. He saw me looking and he knew what I was about, and he smiled to himself-like, and said aloud that he was of a mind to return the lady’s pearls himself.”

“Oh, yes?” I said laconically, leaning back in my chair. I was beginning to quite enjoy this foolish story. “Did he also offer to help you hunt for the rest of my pearls and pins? Did he say that he was in the mood to sweep the gardens? What other chore did our illustrious Emperor charge himself to undertake?”

I laughed as I pictured the Emperor Kylo doing those menial things. He didn’t seem so scary anymore.

Just then, someone else rapped on my door.

“Did you hear that?” I exclaimed delightedly, clapping my hands, “Someone’s asking to be admitted. Why, it must be the Emperor, come to return my pearls.”

The servants paled.

“Oh, you utter nincompoops,” I sighed. “How could it be him? You told me yourself that he just left. Rose, you go and open the door and see what they want.”

Of course, as I was saying all this, my heart was starting to fill up with itching doubt. It couldn’t _be_ him, could it?

It wasn’t, but it may as well have been. Rose came back with a troubled look, and a eunuch in tow.

My heart fell to see him and fell further to see what he was bearing:

A fretwork tray, on which was a little golden casket.

Dazed as I felt, I rose from my chair.

With his arm out, tendering the tray with its casket, the eunuch-messenger said, “I am commanded by His Imperial Majesty to extend to the Princess-Concubine Rey the red invitation.”

I reached out with a trembling hand and opened the casket and removed the scroll that was within. Then I placed it on the commode and sat down and let the servants finish my toilette without saying a single word more, and when I was alone, I took up the scroll and unrolled it.

Blank.

As blank as my mind.

It was blank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to refresh your memory, from the last chapter we learnt that:
> 
> The lucky lady would receive the invitation in the form of a red scroll delivered by a eunuch-messenger. On it would be written the name of the event she was to make herself available for as his partner, as well as some additional details pertaining to the dress. If the scroll was blank, it meant simply that she was wanted in his chambers that evening.
> 
> -
> 
> Right, if you enjoyed the story/chapter, toss a comment to your writer.


	7. Chapter 7

My fingers trembled as I held it and stared at it, half willing for script to form out of the sheeny blankness. Anything. Anything but what this horrid blankness signified!

I let the scroll drop to the ground, and then I picked it up and tried to tear it to pieces, but it was fabricated of silk, and refused to let itself be rent.

My inability to destroy it destroyed my composure. A scream was rising from within me. I threw the scroll; it hit the wall, and then I whirled around, grabbed the pillow nearest me, and screamed into it.

At the same time, something in the room broke with an ear-splitting crack.

I looked up in time to see the broken panes of the mirror hanging over my commode come sliding down. I had somehow caused the mirror to break.

My girl-servant Rose appeared in the open doorway. She looked from the mirror to me- red-faced and rage-filled.

“This is all your fault!” I fumed. I was trembling bodily now. With a short angry cry, I threw the pillow away from me.

Her eyes followed the trajectory of the pillow from hand to floor where it landed on and hid from sight the detestable scroll. She had her hand pressed over her heart. “Me, Ma’am?” she cried.

“If you hadn’t gone to that stupid matinee, this wouldn’t have happened! It’s your fault!”

I stormed about the room. I went and threw myself on the couch and vainly conceived the many precautions I should have taken by which I would have avoided the unexpected meeting with the Emperor: I should have had Rose stay back, of course. I should have had a servant with me in the garden, of course. I should not have left my room, of course. I should have gone to the matinee with the others, of course.

Oh, it was no use. It was done. What to do now?

Rose was crying.

“Quit your crying, I’m trying to think,” I said.

Hot temper had whelmed me, but like a burning gale it came and went, and we were for the moment done with each other. In a cooler frame of mind, I could see that I should be glad to have failed to tear apart the scroll. I could use it.

I could give it to another concubine. I could say it had been left in my care to pass to them.

And then what? I didn’t know; the plot would have to be uncovered a little at a time.

“Who rests in His Imperial Majesty’s favour at this moment, do you know?” I asked Rose.

“Ma’am?”

I felt the temper coming on again. I controlled myself and rephrased the question. “Who is he likely to want tonight? Who is he likely to summon to him?”

Rose looked towards the pillow under which was the red scroll. She looked afraid to give me an answer.

“I don’t mean me,” I growled. “Who _else_ might he perhaps have called for tonight? I know you lot love your gossip. Who might be unsurprised to see the red scroll come to them?” I sifted through my memory. “Pania? Pania, perhaps?”

Rose shook her head. “The Princess-Concubine Pania was the last to receive the red scroll.”

I nodded my comprehension. No one ever received the invite twice in a row, so Pania could not expect to receive it today, which meant I could not palm it off on her.

“All right. Who then?”

“Maybe… Maybe the Imperial Consort Jiya or the Lady-Concubine Meiraq, Ma’am.”

“Good. Get the scroll. Where’s the ribbon it was tied up in? Ah, on the commode. See, there? Tie it up again. Tie it well, like it was before.”

Rose, looking frightened, did as I told her to do, first wiping her face on her sleeve so as not to get the scroll wet.

“Good,” I said, looking the scroll over. Rose had tied the ribbon over it very prettily, probably much more prettily than it had been tied before. “Good. I want you to give this to Max.”

Max was the Chief Eunuch of the household of the Imperial Consort Jiya, and as sweet and artless as his mistress, so he would not suspect me of foul play. In any case, I reasoned that if the Emperor had come this morning to visit with his children, then he might not be displeased to receive a visit from one of their mothers tonight, and Jiya had not offended him as the Empress had, so Jiya was a good choice.

“Yes,” I said, “You go right now and tell him that this scroll was left for Jiya.”

I could tell that she didn’t want to do it, but she bowed and went.

I came out a minute after her and went to the banquet hall where I was set upon at once by Jiya.

“Oh, Rey, I can’t tell you how much I sympathise with you,” she said, taking my arm and putting her head sympathetically down on my shoulder.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rose come hurrying in from the peristyle garden that the banquet hall gave out onto. She was milk-faced with her hand not so discreetly thrust into the bunched upper folds of her skirt, where I knew it still clutched the hidden scroll. She shook her head, her eyes very big and wide. She looked through the columns out into the garden and back at me. Max was outside, talking to Malcor. With them was one of the servants I had sent to pick up my hair ornaments. They were washing their feet in the pool to come in.

“What is it?” Jiya was saying, “What is it, Rey? Oh, your servant comes. Rose, is it?”

Rose was standing a few metres behind us. “Oh, you’re useless,” I turned to hiss at her. “Give me the scroll.”

I snatched it from her.

Jiya saw it; it was a long scroll, impossible to hide.

“Yes, that’s the one,” she sighed. “Is it blank then? Poor Rey, I’m here for you. Tell me what you need.”

“I need you to go in my stead,” I said brightly.

Jiya laughed as if I’d told a very good joke.

I copied her laughter and herded her to a corner table away from the spread. It was still early, and most of the returned showgoers were changing for lunch, but they would all show up soon like a hive of bees, and I didn’t want to make myself and my scroll the centre of attention.

Once sat, I pressed my body intimately into Jiya’s side and lowered my voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “He was here looking for you this morning, you know. It was only by accident that he met with me. He was very disappointed to have missed you.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. He wanted to surprise you. He had a gift for your Kyla.”

“I saw… It made Kyla so happy.”

“He knows how much you love her. It was you he wanted to please, I’ll bet. He wanted to surprise you.”

“I’m not sure… That doesn’t sound-”

“He _said_ so.”

“He did!”

“Oh, yes. It upset him to have come at the wrong time.” I let out a short gasp as though I’d just thought of something clever. “Oh!” I said. “Oh! You know what I think would make him very happy? If _you_ surprised _him_ tonight. It would be so romantic…”

“But he asked for you,” said Jiya, whose pretty lavender eyes were nevertheless swimming with hopeful fancies as she dwelled on my idea.

“Only because he couldn’t find you. I was only the second choice…”

“But it’s never been done. To go to him unasked for…”

“There always has to be a first time,” I said persuasively. “I think he would be very impressed if you did it.”

That was the wrong tack. It brought to mind the Empress Talina’s bold infraction for which she had been punished, and Jiya shrank visibly from the idea. Jiya never wanted to impress anyone by being bold.

“What if you even took Kyla with you?” I tried. “He would welcome the visit. He would want to see how his gift was being enjoyed.”

But my efforts were going up in smoke. Jiya withdrew from me and turned to signal to one of her ladies to join us, which was as obvious a sign as someone like Jiya could make to show that she was done with our tête-à-tête.

I looked around the hall, caught Xian’s eyes, and she came over too.

Under the table, I showed her the scroll.

“I know,” she said. “I heard. You almost made it too, poor dear. How long more did you have? A month?”

Xian was aware of my plot to fly the coop on the back of the One Year Disgrace.

“Two weeks to the day,” I grimaced.

“Ouch. Bad for both of us. I owe Kira a lot of gold then. I bet her you’d make it, you know. But I take comfort in the fact that now you’ll have to stay with me for another year at least.”

“I’m trying to get out of it…”

“Get out of it! Nothing but blood will get you out of it. The Emperor never lies with a woman who’s bleeding, unless it’s him who’s made her bleed. You’re not bleeding now, are you?”

“Oh!” I grinned. “You know what, I think I am!”

She shook her head. “That won’t work,” she warned.

“We’ll see. I have to go. Bye darling.”

-

“This is concerning,” said the harem’s chief physician, as he watched me clutching my middle and moaning a little. He had been sent for by the eunuchs after Rose had told them I had begun my bleed and could regretfully not fulfil my duty tonight.

I was lying on my side. “I’m in pain…”

“This is concerning,” he repeated. “You should not be shedding blood now. You were bleeding two weeks ago.”

“Sometimes it happens,” I assured him. “Give me something for the pain and leave me be.”

“How much have you shed?” He turned to Rose. “How much has your mistress shed? What colour? Show me the cups.”

“She can’t show you anything, we don’t keep blood,” I said. “The tenets of Liliti forbid it, and I observe her rules, even if I am no longer in office as her High Priestess. I do not want to risk her anger. We burn the blood as she asks. Just give me the medicinal sirop and leave me to pray.”

The physician observed me a little while. After that, he said, in a soft tone, “Your Holy Highness, many years ago, a certain concubine reported herself to be bleeding, on the day she was called to duty, and would not let me examine her.”

“And? What has that to do with me? Was she a holy princess?”

“No, but she was commanded to be examined in His Imperial Majesty’s presence, and when she was found not to be bleeding, he said that he had better help her make true her lie and bedded her until she did bleed. He did the same each night for a week, injuring her in bed until she was bleeding just as she had pretended to be. It caused her to be incapable of child-bearing. He even used his hand, you see…”

I tried to imagine what he could have had done to her with his hand that would have damaged her so permanently. Whatever it was, it did sound like something our Emperor would do.

Regardless, I was suspicious. “I’ve never heard this story,” I said.

“It was before Your Holy Highness’s time, and is not a tale we want to repeat except in cases where…” He looked down at me. “…where we feel that the hearing of it will be beneficial to the audience. If I report that you are bleeding and do not want to be examined, His Imperial Majesty may command that you be examined regardless. If you are then found to not be bleeding…”

“Then tell him that you examined me!”

The physician went on in his soft voice. “I understand that you may have your apprehensions regarding the act. But there’s no need to be afraid. The act itself is natural, and your body will…”

“Excuse me. I have to go pray,” I declared, sitting up and sliding out of bed. I had mere hours- eight to be exact now, to find a way to deliver myself from the concubine’s fate, and I would waste none of it. I had to try Malcor now. He was my only hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Rey going to get out of it?
> 
> So, this is practically an original work masquerading as Star Wars fanfic lmao.  
> If you prefer, I have another Reylo that is set in the Star Wars universe, Inescapable, and its Kylo is/will be nowhere near as cruel as Reyne's Kylo.  
> If you like cruel Alphas, I invite you to look at my other story, Foundher.
> 
> Thanks for reading, give me your thoughts they help make the story better.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to work on my Tom Riddle story, Corruption, but I abandoned it for Reyne. If any of you lovely readers desperately hope the next story I update is Corruption, and want to help me with it, let me know in the comment section of Corruption, or send me an email. If you're glad I abandoned it to write this chapter of Reyne, don't let me keep you:

Malcor was in Hana’s room with Hux. Jiya, together with her ladies, was in there with them.

A pallid Hana was lying in bed in much the same position I had assumed in front of the chief physician a little while ago. Jiya, her two ladies, and Malcor were huddled close at her bedside, and Hux was standing by the foot of the bed near the doorway. A funereal air layered the scene.

The servant who let me in whispered with a quiet sob, “My mistress has been taken ill. She’s dying. We are most distressed.”

Only Jiya, I reflected, would be so kind as to visit Hana when she was in one of her self-pitying states. Hana was, according to Hana, constantly ill and dying.

We all exchanged little bows and curtseys, and Hux, whom I had not crossed paths with in almost two months, also broke protocol to embrace me and give me kisses on each cheek.

“Oh, Rey...” Hana stretched an arm towards me. “Have you come to prepare me for the last rites?”

“I’m so glad to see you,” said Jiya, rising. “Why did you vanish during lunch? She did, I took my eye off her to speak with Verenice for only a moment, and when I had turned back, she was gone!”

“Her Holy Highness, I hear, has mastered the disappearing act,” said Hux.

“It’s true,” said Hana, stopping her tearful groaning to chime in with her piece. “Sometimes I forget she’s in a room, even when we’re the only ones in it. It’s uncanny.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Nobody can just vanish. …Except the Gods. You’re absent-minded, that’s all.”

“I do have a lot on my mind,” lamented Hana, and burst into sobs.

“Poor darling Hana has just lost her baby,” Jiya explained quietly.

“Ah.” I studied the crying girl. “…Really?”

“Yes, the physician was here, and he confirmed it. She’s started shedding blood.”

“How could he be sure she’s bleeding? Did he check?”

“What?”

“Never mind. But why are you crying, Hana? Only the other day you told me you were afeared of childbirth. This is a better outcome.”

“That was before- before-” broke out Hana. “Oh, I’ve cursed myself by my own words! Oh, I’m going to die, and I deserve to!”

“You’re not going to die, I promise,” I said kindly. I was still pretending to be gentle and pious, and Malcor for whose benefit it was primarily meant was present. “And what’s more, I’ll take you through the purifying rites when your bleed is over.”

“Will you really? Oh, Rey!”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, clapping my hand to my forehead. “But I mislead myself! I’ve just realised that it will be quite impossible for me to help you.” I turned to address Malcor. “And I’m afraid I won’t be able to lead the recitation tomorrow either, Your Excellency. You’ll both have to find someone else to help… if you can. And hopefully they- whoever _they_ are, won’t be secretly ungodly and faithless for they’ll only make a mess of things if so…”

“But why can’t you do it?” cried Hana, who had moved on from picturing her death to picturing her purifying rites being made a mess of by a secret heretic.

“Because I’ll be unclean, myself,” I replied solemnly. “If I shed maiden’s blood, as might happen this night, I will be considered unclean until my next bleed… And the unclean cannot make anything clean.” I gave Malcor a look of tortured persecution, of such intensity as I could produce. “Ah, if only I could preserve my holiness for all of you… I don’t even think of myself, I only think of you, my friends…”

Malcor looked troubled and ready to speak.

To my displeasure, Hux stole the bait cast for him. “We should all try to be half as selfless and noble as you, Your Holy Highness,” he said. “Such self-sacrifice! I am in admiration. Beginning this very moment, I undertake to emulate your conduct. What do you think, Malcor?”

Malcor, and Hana also, commended my conduct and announced their intent to become as self-sacrificial as me, beginning that very moment, when they would deprive themselves of my spiritual guidance; and my protests fell on deaf ears.

Then, the two Chief Eunuchs, having satisfied themselves that Hana was doing well, made their excuses and left.

I was thoroughly annoyed.

“Take care, Rey,” said Hana, operating in the mode of selflessness and nobility, “that if you are blessed with child, you speak only words of blessing to it. Take me as a lesson… Don’t model yourself on me. I prayed that I be spared the pains of accouchement, and now… Oh, if only I could take my words back!”

Jiya said, “I’m sure Rey knows all the correct words to say. But what’s wrong, Rey?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. I have to go…”

And where to? There was a restlessness in my body, an inexplicable drive to move, to walk and to keep walking. And it was fuelled by the strongest desire to escape. But to where?

“Don’t rush off yet,” pleaded Jiya. “I can tell you’re troubled, and it has to do with the red scroll. What can I do to help? And don’t-” She intercepted my response with a hollow laugh. “Don’t say to go in your stead. I sent him a letter- before lunch, mind, to thank him for Kyla’s gift, and I’ve only just now received a reply. All he said was that he heard she had become too fat, and that as her mother, it’s my responsibility to correct it.”

I put my arms around Jiya. “Oh, you’re a sweetheart,” I sighed. “No, I won’t pester you for something impossible. It’s out of our hands. But will you tell me what to expect of him this night?”

All the ladies perked up and got ready to become very chatty. I could tell that this was probably their favourite subject amongst themselves.

I had heard the bedroom stories before, of course, although I had always heard without hearing, letting the sordid details pass through one ear and out the other. But now, I was ready to pay them heed.

Jiya dismissed all the eavesdropping servants, and then we gathered closer around Hana.

“It depends on his mood,” said Jiya. “He’ll tell you exactly what to do, and you must obey him. If you obey every word, and quickly, it will all be over before you know it, and then he’ll let you leave. He’s not likely to keep you for more than an hour. If you don’t obey, he may… He may take his time.”

They shuddered as a group.

“But is there anything he wants or does without fail? Is there anything I can prepare myself for?”

“No,” she replied. “Only on one thing is he consistent, and it is this. That he will not finish all the way in. He never does.” And she looked around to catch the nods of the others as they agreed that yes, the Emperor never finished all the way in; not with them, and not with anyone they knew.

“All the way in? What do you mean by that?”

Verenice, who was one of Jiya’s ladies, answered, “My elder sister told me that when the alpha finishes, his member becomes stuck in you.” She was turning bright red as she spoke. “She said it remains that way for hours and hours, sometimes even the whole night…”

“I suppose he doesn’t want to be stuck in a person for hours every time,” I mused. “That would be most inconvenient.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t finish all the way in,” said Hana. She had ceased crying. She looked nauseous. “Stuck with him the whole night… I would die of terror.”

“If he doesn’t finish all the way in, then how will I know he’s finished? Will he just… leave?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Verenice said, giggling a little. Her face was still very bright. “There will be… It will be very wet.”

“Seminal fluids,” said Jiya.

I grimaced. “And then?”

“And then he’ll dismiss you. He’ll ring for-”

“My sister said to purge the fluids immediately if you don’t want to be with child,” Verenice interrupted to add. “She said to void as soon as you are able, and then to jump twenty-nine times.”

“But why didn’t you tell me that before, Verenice?” cried Hana. “I was told by Xian to jump just five times...”

“Twenty-nine times exactly?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

“I see.” That was as helpful as anything else, I supposed. “And what does he like?” I asked. “What kind of woman does he like?”

You will remember that we all thought he liked a woman to be strong and brassy like Talina, because he’d made her Empress despite her bringing nothing to the marriage table. But he’d also severely punished her for having been plucky enough to bite him, so...

What did the Emperor like in a woman?

Whatever he liked, I had to be the opposite of that.

“Sometimes he liked it when I cried,” mumbled Hana, “and sometimes it enervated him.”

“Don’t cry,” advised Jiya quickly. “Especially if nothing has even happened yet. Don’t cry.”

“Unless he wants you to cry,” said the second of Jiya’s ladies, Doya, who was a cousin of Jiya’s, and a retiring, painfully shy girl. Jiya had rescued her from the Emperor’s appetites by making her one of her ladies in waiting.

Jiya, as an Imperial Consort, was allowed only two ladies in waiting, unlike the Empress who was allowed four. The ladies in waiting, serving as companions to the Empress or to the Imperial Consorts, were chosen from amongst the pool of Hopefuls and Concubines. They, from the day of their appointment, were spared the red scroll, so their selection could also be guided by a strategic hand.

The Empress Arta had taken the saying of ‘keep your enemies closest’ to heart and chosen four rivals in order to neutralise them. The Empress Talina had not yet exhausted her choices, only having so far appointed two of her most loyal confidantes to the post. Jiya of course had used the opportunity to save Verenice and Doya, two girls even milder than her.

So, it had been years since either of them had been given the red scroll, and their bedroom stories were old ones. I didn’t mind. I was all ears.

“He was in a temper, once,” Doya continued. “And he- He made me- He… He humiliated me to- To raise his spirits.”

“What did he do?” I asked, intrigued. “What did he make you do?”

“He- he had me crawl like a dog and beg like a dog and- and lick-”

“Enough of that,” scolded Jiya. “Don’t scare Rey.”

“I’m not scared. What else must I refrain from doing so as not to offend him?”

“Don’t speak unless he speaks to you,” put in Jiya.

“Don’t bite him,” said Verenice, and everyone laughed.

“It’s not so bad,” said Jiya. “Really. And he can be very… good to you, especially if you please him. And he’s very pleasing to the eye. And he’s the Emperor.”

They all giggled like a gaggle of nervous virgins.

“I’ve never pleased him,” mourned Hana. She sighed. “He is _very_ pleasing to the eye…”

“Is it really your first time receiving the red scroll, Princess?” asked Doya.

“Yes.”

“Oh. I don’t know why I was convinced you had already been chosen many times. I suppose I’ve not been paying attention…”

-

I returned to my room.

I paced up and down in great agitation as the ineluctable hour drew nearer. Nearer and nearer, it drew. It was like an oncoming train, bearing down on me as I lay immovable, unable to do anything but stare in horror.

I was considering making a desperate run for it, making for home. I could do it, couldn’t I? I could flee. I had the means. I could bribe someone. I had gold and jewels and priceless painted books and bundles of raw silk and other such things. Just one of my ceremonial daggers would buy me a ship and crew! I could send my companion Rose out to sell it and to prepare whatever was necessary. He wouldn’t follow after me. I was not a slave to hunt, to capture, and to kill! If I could just make it home…

And if I did make it home, what then? He would surely not suffer the humiliation, the damage to his reputation. He might damage Jakku in turn.

I paced and paced and thought of home, and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed possible that I could and should just go, and the more it seemed impossible.

Eventually I found myself, shrouded in cloth of red and accompanied by a phalanx of eunuch-guards that formed a wall around me on all sides, at the appointed hour, standing before the doors to the Emperor’s inner chambers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, poor Hana had a miscarriage, and the CHIEF physician was instead sent to check on Rey (who was pretending to be bleeding).
> 
> What happens next chapter? Give me your best guess.
> 
> x


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my patient readers.

From many of my Sisters’ accounts told to me over the last year, I had cobbled together a rough mental layout of the Emperor’s inner chambers. I knew there was a sitting room leading directly to a bedchamber. There was also a second bedchamber which Meiraq claimed to have peeked into once.

Meiraq was a girl of ethereal beauty who possessed almost all the qualities I admire in a peer, but she was disadvantaged in that she was only moderately more capable of logical thought than Hana.

“That’s really where he sleeps,” she had said. “In his secret bedchamber. I saw a bed.”

“How is it secret?” I asked.

“Because no one’s been in it. At least, no one concubine has. Not even Talina’s been in it. I’m sure. I’ve asked around...”

“But if it’s secret, how did you see it?”

“Through the doorway.”

“Then it’s not secret, is it? It’s just private.”

Anyway, whether only private or also secret, it was partially thanks to Meiraq’s chatty mouth that I had any inkling of where I might be and what might befall me, so I must not be too critical.

I knew that I was in the sitting room.

Almost immediately, I heard the voice of the Emperor. He was dismissing the eunuch-guards.

Withdrawing, they made their exit, leaving my person open to view for the first time since I stepped foot outside of the harem that night.

The Emperor was before me; I was looking at him through a hazy film of red.

Very low I curtsied, and then I straightened and waited for him to unveil me.

He came and stood directly in front of me; his chest was level with my eyes. He reached for the trim of the veil. The movement stirred the gauzy silk around my face. “I find myself almost in disbelief to see you standing here before me,” he said. He sounded quite reflective. “Would I have believed it, if when I had asked for you to be brought to me, I had been instead informed that you do not exist? You were like a vision in the garden. A dream.”

He tugged on the veil, and it came sliding off the crown of my head and onto the floor.

“Yet here you are,” he murmured, as I raised my face and looked into his. “Not a vision. Not a dream. How have you escaped my notice all this while, priestess?”

I wasn’t sure if he was still speaking to himself, but I thought that I had better try and put a stop to all this dangerous romanticising.

“I am very boring, Sire,” I sighed. I tried my best as I spoke to look as boring as possible. “I am dull and uninspiring, I own. You pass me over all the time. Truly you are a discerning judge. You know to eat the good fruit and you know to walk away from the rotten.”

“Then in summoning you to me this evening, will you say that I pick a good fruit, or that my judgement becomes rotten?” he asked.

“If you only inspect the fruit and do not partake, your record will remain unblemished.”

He smiled an unsettling smile. “Why do you think I called for you, if not to… partake?”

I hesitated. I was getting the horrible feeling that he enjoyed the spar, and I didn’t want to continue in this vein; I wanted to be as unmemorable as possible. “Forgive me, Sire, the servants told me- and if they have lied, let them answer for it, that His Imperial Majesty was so chivalrous as to come upon and retrieve my beloved pearls this morning, my pearls I’d thought lost forever…”

“You thought I summoned you in order to return your pearls,” he stated. He was still smiling. His teeth were very white, and his dark eyes were brilliant in the gold wash of the candles and the lamps.

I waited for him to continue, but he kept looking at me.

“I cannot divine His Imperial Majesty’s mind,” I said finally.

He hummed and then moved away. I watched him go to pull at a bell lever.

That was a surprise. I had been told to expect him to only summon the servants when he had finished. Had he decided he had done with me then? Had he decided to return my pearls?

Ha.

Suppressing a snort at that implausible idea, I nevertheless relaxed minutely and took the opportunity to look around.

As had been described to me prior, the sitting room was in dark wood decorated in military motifs. Wood slat windows framed by sliding panels let in the ambient light of the lanterned gardens outside. Though big enough to fit some hundred persons, the room had only one seat, a hard looking settee in the uncommonly high-armed and high-backed style of the Utapauns, that impressively tall race of people so peace loving that barely a grain of resistance was put up when the Emperor with his army descended on their cities like a tidal wave.

The bell lever was on the wall close to the settee, and after the Emperor had pulled on it, he took a seat, crossing one loafing leg over the other.

I heard the doors open behind me and servants coming in. They began to set up, in one corner of the room, a chair and a cello, and a screen to hide the chair and cello. A blindfolded court musician was led by the hand into the room and set up behind the screen.

I thought this secretive behaviour all rather unnecessary. This musician was well known to me; since my first year at Court, she and I had spent many long hours together working on some performance or other.

The musician set herself to playing the cello.

“You were humming a zeltron ballad in the garden this morning,” said the Emperor. “This is the one, isn’t it? _Lady of Lauroc_.” He placed his hands on his spread knees, leaned back against his hard chair, and jerked his chin at me. “Dance.”

I bowed and did as bid, scanning him now and then to gauge his reaction. He was watching me with his trademark bored expression. I didn’t know what to make of it.

When the song ended, the Emperor sighed. He motioned. “Again.”

The song re-commenced.

I continued to dance, as proficiently and impersonally as I knew how. It was a technique I’d perfected during my years as a Hopeful to get me through performances without catching anyone’s special attention.

But to my chagrin and puzzlement, the more I danced, the more plainly ruffled seemed the Emperor.

After the fourth repetition, he dismissed the musician and got to his feet.

He circled me.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

Unwillingly, I closed my eyes.

“Dance.”

Eyes shut and without any music to accompany me, I danced. It was obvious by now that he wanted to see replicated my dance of this morning. I wondered why. Surely, it wasn’t because he had seen me accomplish all those impossible feats this morning? If he’d had, surely my head would be lonely in the courtyard at this moment, not here attached to my dancing body?

“You danced differently this morning,” came the dissatisfied voice of the Emperor. “What was different?”

I stopped, opening my eyes and looking boldly at him. “I was alone when I danced,” I suggested.

“Hm.” His stony eyes were trained on mine. His mouth pressed in on itself as he considered my words.

Turning away, he retook his seat. “Think yourself alone now then.” He flicked an insouciant hand. “Dance.”

I didn’t try to think myself alone, of course; it was impossible, even if it were something I’d wanted. I was acutely aware of his presence. He was like a guillotine blade.

I thought instead about the story of the Princess Madgiadem who danced all night every night to appease her bloodthirsty husband and save her own life until she dropped dead on the twelfth night from exhaustion.

I think the official moral of the story is that fate is impossible to avoid. Personally, I think it should be that one must marry very carefully.

He wouldn’t have tried to kill her if they had been Alpha and Omega and mated, I suppose; but even mated pairs aren’t exempt from the bleak consequences of making a poor choice. Take for example my great-grandaunt-by-law, the Princess Consort Jerika, who married into our family by way of my great-granduncle, Prince Lucas.

Prince Lucas, or Lucas the Scourge, as he is so named by historians, enjoyed hunting down the desert indigens the way most people enjoy hunting oryxes.

Let me tell you something about these desert brigands. They are like locusts. They are like vermin. The minute you think you’ve got rid of them, back up they pop from their miserable holes to resume harrying merchants crossing our deserts, kidnapping unlucky nobles for ransom, and wreaking general havoc on our outer reaches. Would that we could crush them once and for all! But no; even to this day they remain a pebble in our boot.

Anyway, back to the story of Prince Lucas, of which there’s admittedly not much left to tell. On one of his excursions, this famed great-granduncle of mine was killed. His wife died of course at that very same moment, in their home. At the table, in the middle of lunch, with a pastry in hand.

This was the very reason, not Prince Lucas or his wife or the desert clans, I mean, but this- this _chink_ in the otherwise beneficial Alpha-Omega bond, was the very reason I suspected for why the Emperor Kylo remained firmly unmated. He didn’t want to be compromised by a defenceless wife, and who could blame him? Why, in his place, I’d be carrying on in exactly the same way!

Imagine, if you can, being an undefeated Emperor, young and handsome and blessed with mysterious and frightening powers to boot, with at least two, maybe three centuries of continued war-making and other such fun activities ahead of yourself to look forward to… Imagine being and having all that only to get booted off the mortal coil by your idiot wife falling prey to some stupid assassination scheme.

I imagine a good many of my peers are very easy to assassinate. I could probably myself take out Hana, Jiya, and Meiraq, and all in a day; and I shudder to think what the harem would now look like if the Empress Arta and her goons had been allowed to run free in it. Probably, out of all its inmates, only our current Empress, Talina, can hold her own in a fight. Yet not even she had been deemed mate-worthy.

Which meant that I would likely be doomed to another four ignominious years in service to our Emperor.

Less, if he discovered my own mysterious powers and gave me a good shove off the coil.

I wondered if there was anything that I could do to satisfy him without ending up on the receiving end of his sword; either of his swords if you catch my drift.

Bitterly, I let his command run through my head. Think myself alone? Think myself alone while he was virtually breathing down my neck?

With a start, I realised that I should do exactly that. I should try cocooning myself off again. I wasn’t sure if it was possible, what with only the two of us in the room together; but perhaps if I tricked him first?

Halting, I said, “Permit me, if it please Your Imperial Majesty, to put forward a suggestion.”

He gestured for me to continue.

“If it would humour you to also close your eyes, Sire, I could better pretend I were alone. I would sing first. That’s what I did this morning to get myself in the mood. I sang to myself before I danced. You would only have to keep your eyes closed for a minute or two, and when you open them again, it would be like how it was when you surprised me in the garden.”

“In doing as you suggest, Princess-Concubine, I will be humouring _you_ ,” he replied shortly. “I will condescend to humour you, but only once. Please me, _I_ suggest, for you may depend upon it that if this scheme of yours fails to work and you do not please me by it, I will find some other way for you to please me.”

“It will work,” I said, with, I think, so fiendish a smile as he was giving me, that he raised his brow.

I waited for him to lean back and close his eyes. I began to sing the ballad, crooning it as sweetly and enchantingly as if to a babe at the breast.

I let my vision blur as I sang; and slowly, slowly and so subtly, I began spinning a cocoon around myself again. Into it I weaved a spell for sleep and for stupor.

I spun as I counted the passing of time in my head.

Three minutes.

His eyes remained closed.

Five minutes.

His head nodded.

Seven minutes.

He slumped a little.

At nine minutes, I stopped. I stared at him as I wondered what to do next.

As I was standing there scratching my head, he jerked awake.

I jerked too, but he only passed his hand over his eyes and sighed. He straightened, looked about him, appearing to be thinking very hard; and then, acting as if he thought himself alone, he got up and passed through the doorway into the next chamber.

I remained where I was for about fifteen minutes to be safe, before tiptoeing to the open doorway and peering into the next room, which was indeed a bedchamber. Its bed was empty. There was another open doorway at the other end of the room, straight ahead. It was crossing my mind that I should cross the room to look through that doorway so I could report back that I too had seen into the secret bedchamber of the Emperor when all of a sudden, I heard a grinding sound coming from behind me.

Alarmed, I whipped around. The sinister grinding was being made by the heavy bolts over the doors, which were moving of their own accord into place.

My hair stood on end.

When the doors were bolted, the windows began to shutter themselves. All the little slats flicked shut; the clicking of wood on wood was like the chatter of large insects.

Then, as though extinguished by a passing wind, every light big and small in the Emperor’s rooms went out.

I was in full darkness.

Motionless, I awaited whatever might next occur.

But nothing else occurred, and after some uneventful minutes, I took a few blind steps back into the sitting room, searching with outstretched hands for a place to recover in. The nausea that came every time I overused my powers or employed them in a new way had just hit me.

I could only think of the utapaun settee, but I didn’t want the Emperor to return and find me on his chair, so I sat on the floor with my sweating forehead pressed against the wall.

I wondered if the Emperor too felt ill every time he used his powers. Was he right now curled up in bed fighting off the urge to vomit? Was this why, outside of the battlefield, he never really liked to exhibit his devastating powers?

I wondered what he would do when he woke up, and I wondered whether I had done the right thing.

Had I done the right thing? I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I kept thinking back on the story of Princess Madgiadem, and of her dancing until she fell dead.

I fell asleep where I sat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok I think someone last chapter correctly guessed that he was going to make Rey dance for him (at least to begin with lmao).  
> Give me your best guesses for what happens next chapter!
> 
> x


	10. Chapter 10

I was awoken the next morning by soft eunuch hands.

Very unhappily, I turned on my side and dragged the pillow over my head so they would get the message and go away.

“Your Holy Highness…” came their persistent whispers, “Your Holy Highness, you must rise. We must take you back to the Harem before the Gentlemen of the Chambers come in to do the Emperor’s valises…”

Those words had the effect of clearing my mind. Like an automaton, I sat up straight, opened my eyes, and looked around, scanning my environment quickly.

I was in a bed! In the Emperor’s private chambers! With the coverlet over me!

But I was not in the secret second bedchamber at least, and the Emperor was absent, and that relieved me greatly.

“What do you mean?” I demanded, getting out of the bed. “Where is the Emperor?”

A eunuch in yellow, the highest-ranking there, replied that the Emperor had already departed the palace. “The lords are coming to do his valises, and we must escort Your Holy Highness back to the Harem before they arrive.”

I couldn’t stop the joy from spreading across my face. “He’s really departed? He’s left the palace grounds? You’re certain?”

“Yes, Your Holy Highness.”

“Where to? For how long?”

He didn’t know, he said, as the Emperor had not made anyone aware of his intentions to leave the palace that morning.

Apparently, he (the Emperor) had come bursting out of his rooms at half-six, summoned his closest Knights to him, and taken off without so much as a word to another soul, leaving his confused retinue to hastily arrange his travelling things and catch up to him on the road.

I later learnt from Malcor, who’d himself learnt from the Chief Eunuch of the Emperor’s Chambers, who’d himself learnt from the Lord of the Chambers, who’d himself learnt from the Grand Chamberlain, who’d personally overheard in a conversation between two Knights of Ren, that wherever it was the Emperor had gone to on that impromptu voyage, he had there destroyed a training temple, of all things.

The destruction of that temple catalysed quite a chain of events, and was itself a direct result of what I had done the night prior, and I wonder now if things might have turned out differently had I played a different hand…

But I’m beginning to get ahead of myself. Let me try to continue this story in the right sequence.

As soon as I was returned to the Harem by the eunuch-guards, I was accosted by the Empress’s ladies in waiting who invited me to visit with their lady. I replied with the formalities- that it would honour me to visit her whenever she desired; they in turn replied that it was her desire that I visit her at once, at which point, I had of course no choice but to go along with them.

The Empress was no longer confined to her residences, but since her sentencing, rarely was ever seen out of it. I suppose she was never a very social nor political creature to start with, even if she was religious. And she was religious. She was a devotee of one of those rare religions that still practiced human sacrifice.

My father and eldest brother Red performed those from time to time, and when I asked them what it felt like, my father thought a little and then said, “Do you remember when you had to kill the lamb, the one you thought was so sweet that you begged the acolytes to let you keep it?”

“I remember,” I said, disgruntled. I had tried to negotiate with those withered acolytes, but they would have none of it; and then I’d held up their entire ceremony for two hours by clutching the lamb and crying all over the altar until an acolyte brought me a message from Red saying that if I brought that lamb home, he would have the servants catch it, bleed it, and serve me it for dinner, but that if I did my duty, he would help me convince our father to allow me an appropriate pet as soon as was possible.

That’s how I got Beebee, by the way.

My father said, “You swore you wouldn’t do it ever again, but the next month they brought you another lamb to sacrifice, and you found that you could.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s a little bit like that.”

My brother Red said, cavalierly, “You get used to anything. If you can kill a lamb, you can kill a human.”

My brother Silver said, vehemently, “It’s barbaric. It’s all barbaric. And for what? It doesn’t even mean anything. None of it does.”

My brother Blue said, cryptically, “All things have their meaning if one looks hard enough.”

“Then the Emperor hasn’t looked hard enough at human sacrifice,” my mother commented. “He forbade it in the Capitol.”

My father scoffed and said that the Emperor had killed more people than all the religions combined, and that he (my father) couldn’t kill a tenth that number if he sacrificed endlessly without sleep for the rest of his life, and then he made my youngest brothers Black and White answer him as to how many people he would end up killing if he sacrificed nonstop for the next century.

Black had the sense to ask which god he would be sacrificing to in this scenario, which is an important question, as, depending on the religion, the entire process could take anywhere between half of an hour to several.

My father answered with, “The Nightmother.”

The Nightmother, if I may first give you a quick lesson in theology, is the deity singularly worshipped by the Dathomiri. Sacrificing to this lizard-headed, spider-legged Goddess is as quick and easy as knocking a man over the head and dropping him in the nearest swamp.

Interestingly, the swamp part is key, so it mattered little that human-sacrifice was prohibited; the Nightmother’s witches, among which the Empress Talina was counted, could never have properly worshipped their goddess here in the Capitol, because there are no swamps in the Capitol.

I knew, therefore, when her ladies in waiting appeared to march me off to her residence, that the reason for which I was being summoned could only have to do with my having staid the night in the Emperor’s chambers.

We found the Empress, in boots and breeches, training at archery in an open, muddy field.

I don’t know anything about archery, so I didn’t know if she was any good, but when she finally put down her bow and came over to where I was waiting, at a safe distance from all the muck, I gave her polite praise.

“Don’t do that,” she said, towering over me. She was as tall as the Emperor, and as frightening in stature. Her eyes were orange and they glowed. “I don’t like false friends,” she declared, glowering at me with those glowing eyes. “You’re not going to be a false friend, are you?”

I said, “No, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Because you’re not my friend.”

“I am not your enemy, Madam,” I said very diplomatically. “I still pray nightly for the auspicious mating of my Emperor and Empress.”

“That’s what you were doing last night?” she asked. “All night?” She violently pulled off her muddy boots, threw them to the ground, and accepted a clean new pair from her attendants. “You were praying with the Emperor that he might mate with your Empress?”

“Yes, Madam,” I replied. “Although I confess I prayed that part in silence. The rest of the night, I led the Emperor in song and dance.”

She gave me a look, and then snorted. “That’s original, as euphemisms go, at least.” She sat down beside me and looked out over her field of mud. “Do you know what was here before, Sister?” she asked, pointing with jutted chin at the field.

“No, Madam.”

“Rose gardens,” she said. She snorted again. “That Arta… Was there ever a possibility of her surviving our Emperor? Not in a thousand galaxies.”

I nodded agreeably. I looked at the gardeners listlessly watering the already over-hydrated soil. “What then is Your Imperial Majesty growing in place of the rose garden?” I asked.

“Plants,” she said bluntly. She gave me a sidelong look. “You swore to kill your rivals’ children. I respect that. I like your guts. But! I won’t let myself or my daughter be done in easily! Try us, Sister. I don’t mind if you did. Try to kill my Kyla. You’ll come up against me, and I’m no Melanthe. I’m no Jiya. I’m no coquette concubine. I’m a warrior!”

I was very alarmed at the way her speech was trending. High-minded though it was, I thought it would only be a matter of time before she moved on from that generous spirit of inviting the first strike to an aggressive one of dealing the first strike.

“You have me quite mistaken, Madam,” I protested. “I never swore to kill my rivals’ children. What it was I swore to was to never stoop to such cowardice as to set an assassin on someone.”

Really, I don’t know why I ever swore this at all. There are some people I don’t think that I should like to have to kill on my own, and would pay good money not to have to, and this warrior-Empress was on the very top of that list.

“It’s the same thing!” said the Empress Talina, nearly shouting. “Don’t play word games with me, I say!”

I said, “The Emperor has never lain with me. No man has lain with me. I am a holy princess. I am set apart for the Gods. I was not made to be mate to an Emperor or even mother to an Emperor. The Emperor knows this. I was made for the Gods, and the Gods who chose my mother and the hour of my birth will also choose my mate and the hour of my mating.”

The Empress had never been treated to one of my acts of ecclesiastical pageantry before, and I gave her the full works, complete with the raised voice and the raised arms and the raising of the eyes to the heavens. And at the ending of my speech, will you believe it, the sky actually flashed with lightning, a great wind blew on us, and great big drops of rain began to fall.

I implemented the inclement weather smoothly into my performance, and Talina appeared suitably impressed. Standing, she declared that I must be speaking the truth since the Nightmother had given the sign.

“Yes,” I agreed, while I pondered which one of the weather effects was meant to have been the sign.

“But, why,” she demanded, “did you want to go and become a Concubine for?”

I lied and said, “I was called to this by the Gods, although for what purpose, I was not given to know. I do as they guide me and trust that all will be made clear in due time. Remember her sign!”

And so, we parted for the time being, neither as friends nor as enemies.

I returned to the principal villa where I was set upon by some friends of mine, who had been waiting for me, they said, as soon as they had heard from Malcor that I was on my way back to the Harem, and they had also ordered a bath and warm compresses which were cold by now.

I anticipated their questions and told them immediately that nothing of import had happened the night prior, and that indeed, nothing at all had happened.

My claim was undermined by the arrival of two eunuchs with a jewellery case. The one opened the jewellery case and the other said to me, “His Imperial Majesty presents his favoured concubine with a gift.”

I’d quite forgotten this custom of the morning-after gift, and I was not a grateful recipient. “His Imperial Majesty presents me with nothing,” I said sharply. “He didn’t bed me. Take it away.”

But my words fell on their ears like rain on stone. They did not want to take it away, and they pleaded with me to accept it.

Malcor spoke up for them, saying, “Your Holy Highness, they know nothing but what they were commanded, which was to bring this to you, and they are afraid they will be accused of stealing if they did not put it into your hands.”

Say what I would, I could not make them abandon their cause. Servants, you know, can be the most stubborn people. If you absolutely have to win at a negotiation, and it’s no abasement to send a substitute, always use a servant.

So, the Emperor’s servants won that struggle, and I was impelled to keep the gift. I stewed over it for a long moment and then made myself feel better by going and terrorising everyone into according with me that the Emperor had not touched me. The gift, I forgot all about until two weeks after that, when my time at the harem had come to an end.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if this story deserves to be continued.
> 
> I do not like ugly warnings in my pretty stories, but apparently such things are necessary.
> 
> *** Do NOT steal this work. If I find out this work has been copied/stolen/plagiarised etc, I will no longer continue to post updates to it online. ***
> 
> Come and talk with me on:  
> https://curiouscat.me/itsjustsilver


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